Chief Minister B. S. Yediyurappa on Wednesday announced a ₹1,610-crore relief package to help affected people in various sectors including flower farmers, weavers, auto and taxi drivers, and industries who are in distress due to the lockdown on account of COVID-19.
Construction workers, barbers, and washermen too are among those who are going to be benefitted by the relief package.
The flower growers, who have undertaken cultivation on an estimated 11,687 hectares of land, have been given an one-time compensation of ₹25,000 per hectare. The compensation would be offered for cultivation on land upto a maximum quantum of one hectare. The compensation comes in the wake of thousands of flower farmers expressing anguish over their flower crops drying up on the fields as they were unable to market them.
Announcing the package at a press conference in Bengaluru, Mr. Yediyurappa said the government was also in the process of announcing a similar package for growers of vegetables and fruits.
Similarly, one-time relief of ₹5,000 will be given to washermen and barbers — both in urban and rural areas — as their businesses have come to a standstill in the last one and half months. The Chief Minister said the State has about 60,000 washermen and about 2,30,000 barbers.
In the same way, a one-time compensation of ₹5,000 has been announced for auto and taxi drivers who number around 7,75,000 in the State.
Sops for industries
In a bid to revive MSMEs, which have suffered huge production losses due to the lockdown, Mr. Yediyurappa announced that their monthly fixed charges in electricity bills will be waived off for two months.
Similarly, payment of fixed charges in the electricity bills of large industries have been deferred without penalty and interest for a period of two months.
Referring to the problems of construction workers, Mr. Yediyurappa said the government had provided a one-time compensation of ₹2,000 to 11.80 lakh construction workers among the total 15.80 lakh registered construction workers. While the remaining construction workers too would get such a benefit soon, the government would provide an additional ₹3,000 to all the construction workers, he added.
To reach out to about 54,000 handloom weavers who are in distress, the chief minister announced Nekara Samman Yojane under which each of them would get ₹2,000 a year.
Similarly, he announced that the government would release the second installment of ₹80 crore from the ₹129-crore loan waiver scheme announced for weavers. To ensure that all weavers got this benefit, the government has decided to reimburse the loan amount of upto ₹1 lakh that has been paid by some weavers from January 1 to March 31 in 2019.
