Govt contemplating loans for 15 cr people under PMMY

Union Minister of State for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya today said the Union government was planning to disburse loans to nearly 15 crore people under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana. Speaking at a review meeting of State Level Bankers Committee, he said the Union Budget allocates around Rs 1.85 lakh crore for this purpose. "At present, there are nearly three crore people who have benefited through PMMY. The government intends to provide these loans mainly to the women entrepreneurs from the backward sections," he said. Some 3.5 lakh people in Telangana and 6.18 lakh people in Andhra Pradesh were granted loans under the scheme, the minister said. At another event, Dattatreya said the Centre would issue a notification on April 1 to provide medical facilities to auto-rickshaw drivers at Employees State Insurance Corporation hospitals. It would be implemented on pilot basis first at Delhi and Hyderabad, he said. Speaking at a function where the ESIC and Telangana Government signed an MoU for temporary handover of ESIC hospitals at Sanatnagar and Nacharam to the state, he said that more workers in the unorganised sectors will be brought under the social security system in the coming days. N Narasimha Reddy, state minister for Home and Labour, requested the Union minister to provide facilities at ESIC hospitals at Warangal and elsewhere in Telangana.