For the fourth consecutive year, the YSRCP government on Thursday credited an amount of ₹193.31 crore to the unencumbered bank accounts of 80,546 weaver families under the ‘YSR Nethanna Nestham’.
Addressing a programme to mark the occasion at Thotamula village of Pedana constituency in Krishna district, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy said his government disbursed financial assistance amounting to about ₹1.65 lakh crore to the Backward Classes (BCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and minorities under various schemes in the last three years.
‘Real social justice’
“The government has taken other concrete steps for their empowerment, to which no previous government has even spared a thought. By doing so, the government has ensured that social justice is delivered in the true sense,” Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy asserted.
A financial support of ₹24,000 provided to each one of the over 80,000 weaver families every year helped in upgrading the looms and enabled them to come up with new designs that caught the fancy of customers abroad. Due to the upgrade, the weavers’ monthly income increased from barely ₹5,000 in 2018-19 to more than ₹15,000 now, he said.
An aggregate of ₹776.13 crore was disbursed to the weavers’ families in the last three years under the above scheme, he said. This apart, social security pension amounting to ₹880 crore was given to the weavers, who received another ₹393 crore through APCO, the Chief Minister said.
Marketing facility
“More importantly, the government has provided them marketing facilities by tying up with leading e-commerce companies such as Amazon, Myntra, Mirraw and Flipkart,” he said.
“The credit for constituting a permanent commission for the BCs goes to the YSRCP government,” the Chief Minister said.
Apart from that, the YSRCP had given 50% of the berths in the first Cabinet to the BCs, SCs, STs and minorities, which went up to 70% after the reshuffle, he added.
Of the eight Rajya Sabha members, four belonged to the BCs, and 18 out of the 32 party MLCs were from the weaker sections, he said. Several other measures were taken for the socio-economic empowerment of the BCs, SCs, STs and minorities, 50% of whom were women, he added.
“All this is in sharp contrast to the TDP term, during which a single community called the shots,” Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy said.
‘Vicious campaign’
He further said the compounded annual growth rate of debt when the TDP was in power was 19% compared to only 15% now. “But the TDP and its media outfits have unleashed a vicious campaign that the government has gone bankrupt,” Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy alleged.
Earlier, the Chief Minister tried his hand at operating a loom, and interacted with the beneficiaries of the scheme.
He later sanctioned more than ₹100 crore for various development works proposed by Minister for Housing Jogi Ramesh, and announced that he would soon lay the foundation for the Machilipatnam port, saying that the High Court had just given a green signal to the project.
Ministers G. Amarnath and R.K. Roja and MLAs P. Venkataramaiah, K. Venkateswara Rao and K. Parthasarathy were present.
