The Government of Telangana is planning to improve the living standards of the Poorest of the Poor (PoP) under the Telangana Rural Inclusive Growth Programme (TRIGP) by securing a loan of Rs. 1,000 crore from the World Bank.
This was stated by Minister for Information Technology and Rural Development K.T. Rama Rao here on Friday after a review meeting on the functioning of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP). He directed Principal Secretary of Rural Development J. Raymond Peter to convene a meeting with World Bank officials soon to pursue the loan by giving the State government’s consent.
The amount will be spent on improving the living standards of Self Help Group women’s households over the next five years as part of the millennium development goals, the Minister said. Chief Executive Officer of SERP, A. Murali, informed the Minster that there were 47,62,532 women in the 4,13,770 Self Help Groups.
The Minister asked the SERP officials to explore revenue generating opportunities.
Sense of ownershipPromising that the government was committed to constructing buildings for all 17,956 village organisations (VOs) of SHGs, Mr. Rama Rao asked officials to explore the possibility of contribution from the groups so that they could have a sense of ownership. He directed the officials not to insist on the SHGs to pay interest on the linkage loans taken by them till the Chief Minister takes a decision on the interest-free loan scheme. The matter of improving the linkage from Rs. 5 lakh to Rs. 10 lakh would also be brought to the notice of the Chief Minister for his clearance.
He asked the officials to visit Delhi at the earliest to pursue Rs.450 crore assistance from the Centre under the National Rural Livelihoods Programme (NRLP). A team of RD and SERP officials will visit Kerala and Karnataka soon to study the RD programmes being implemented there, he stated.
