Coimbatore Corporation on Saturday began providing financial relief to street vendors to overcome the impact of lockdown induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources familiar with the development said as of Saturday afternoon, the civic body had credited to bank account the relief of ₹1,000 each to more than 1,800 of the 6,169 street vendors.
By Monday or Tuesday, the Corporation would complete crediting the money to the eligible among the remaining vendors.
The Corporation began crediting the money to each vendor’s bank account based on an announcement by Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on the floor of the Assembly that the State Government would extend the financial relief.
Thereafter, the Government had transferred ₹61.69 lakh to the Corporation for disbursement – to be credited to each vendor’s bank account.
To facilitate the transfer of money, the Corporation had on Friday asked vendors with vendor identity card to come forward to share their bank account details to officials at the head office in Town Hall or the five zonal offices.
Initially, the Corporation had difficulty in collecting the bank account details because the vendors were apprehensive if it were some prank. After dissemination of the information that the vendors could call the Corporation officials on landline numbers, they came forward.
Many among the vendors were not aware of the IFSC code of the branch where they operated their account and a few among them could not convey to the officials the details.
Several such persons reported directly to the Corporation officials at the Town Hall office, the sources said.
Further, to the complete the process at the earliest, the Corporation had on Saturday deployed close to 30 persons to call up the vendors to seek the bank details.
The Corporation that had so far only the vendors’ vendor identity number, name, phone number and Aadhar details, now also had their bank details.
It would soon complete the money disbursement, the sources added.
The list that the Corporation went by to credit the COVID-19 financial relief was of 2016.
There were many redundancies in the list and the number of actual vendors was twice that of the civic body’s, said S.M. Ubaidu Rahman, a member of the Town Vending Committee.
He said that he had asked the Corporation to consider also including those vendors who did not make it to the list – that is vendors who did not have vendor identity card.
