Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala has urged the government to enhance housing loan for people belonging to the Scheduled Caste communities to Rs.5 lakh and write off all loans up to Rs.1 lakh taken by them.
He was speaking during a visit to Thayyil Meethal Scheduled Caste colony near Atholi here under his Gandhi Gramam programme.
Mr. Chennithala who received an enthusiastic welcome when he arrived for the visit had breakfast and lunch with the people of the colony.
He said development activities to the tune of Rs.1 crore would be taken up in the colony. A committee led by M.K. Raghavan, MP, and the local panchayat president would lead the development activities.
The KPCC chief said housing loans should be raised to Rs.5 lakh from Rs.2 lakh as the cost of construction had shot up.
He would request the government to write off loans up to Rs.1 lakh taken by the members of the Scheduled Caste communities.
Mr. Chennithala said the benefits of Centrally sponsored schemes meant for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were not reaching the target groups. Their condition in the State was grave. Not even 10 per cent of the welfare measures were reaching these groups, he said, demanding that the officials responsible should be identified and punished. Middlemen, he said, were pocketing the benefits.
He said he had been able to grasp the true gravity of the problems of the underprivileged sections during his Gandhi Gramam programme. His perception of the problems and observations would be published as a book in December or January.
Mr. Raghavan; K.C. Abu, District Congress Committee president; N Subramanian and T. Siddique, Congress leaders; and P. Sankaran, former Minister, accompanied Mr. Chennithala.
