Mumbai: BMC Completes Half Target For PM SVANidhi

Mumbai, 5th December 2022: A special micro-credit facility scheme for street vendors is being implemented in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) area under the Prime Minister Street Vendor Self-Reliance Fund (PM SVANidhi), and applications from 50,000 hawkers have been approved so far. The target was set to approve one lakh applications by December 3. But only 50 per cent of the hawkers have responded.

After the layoffs, the central government introduced the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme in 2020 to provide a working capital loan of ten thousand rupees to the hawkers for one year to restart their business. The implementation of this scheme is going on by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation. But the hawkers in Mumbai were not coming forward for this scheme. Therefore, the municipality also organized camps for public awareness about this scheme. But the hawkers remained unenthusiastic. So now, a target has been set for the department offices so that a maximum number of hawkers apply in this scheme.

A target was set to receive applications from one lakh hawkers by December 3. But till December 3, applications of only 52 thousand hawkers were received, out of which 50 thousand applications have been approved, informed the municipal officials. Even though the deadline of December 3 has expired, the scheme will continue, the officials said. There are about one lakh hawkers in Mumbai and 15 thousand authorized hawkers. It is seen that the number of hawkers has increased due to the loss of jobs during the layoffs. Even so, these hawkers are still not very enthusiastic about the scheme for street vendors.