ONGOLE: For the last few weeks, the Prakasam district SC Corporation has been in the news due to the fraudulent activities of its own staff in recovering loan amounts. From 2015-16, the SC Corporation has sanctioned loans worth around Rs 20 crore for the selected beneficiaries for setting up small business units under the National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (NSFDC) and National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation (NSKFDC) schemes. As many as 589 of the beneficiaries did not pay their loan instalments regularly and it resulted in a big default mounted up to Rs 18 crore for the SC Corporation.
On the directives of the higher officials, it has issued loan recovery notices to all the defaulters as well as to their guarantors. As the beneficiaries did not respond to the notices, the SC Corporation focused more on the guarantors and again issued notices to them. This initiative got some response from the loan defaulters and some of them started clearing their loan dues.
Some staffers had started pocketing the recovered loans at this juncture. Having learnt about it, some of the beneficiaries who repaid part of their loans, lodged a complaint with the SC Corporation in this regard. Taken aback, the SC Corporation probed the issue and an NMR employee of the corporation was found to be behind the scam and a few others were also found to be supporting him.
The employee identified as J Murali Mohan had pocketed Rs 3.8 lakh of the recovered amount. He was immediately suspended and a case was registered against him under Sections 409, 420 of the IPC for misappropriating the recovered loan amount of the SC Corporation. As the loan dues were not repaid properly, around Rs 11 crore subsidy amount was kept in nearly 400 bank branches across the district for four years without any use.
Taking the issue seriously, the district authorities had appointed an inquiry committee headed by Joint Collector Abhishikth Kishore to probe the entire episode. SC Corporation Executive Director Srinivasa Viswanath appealed to the beneficiaries to take receipts on payment of their loan amount from the authorised staff to prevent any further irregularities.