Conference hosted to scale up Skill Training

Today four concerned central ministries, state governments, bankers, experts and NGOs discussed ways and means of scaling up skills training and credit flow for self-employment of urban poor in a bid to reduce urban poverty in a speedy manner.

Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation organised a day long National Conference on 'Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission' in New Delhi to discuss bottlenecks in its implementation and evolving a more effective way forward.

Minister of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation M. Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Rural Development Birendra Singh, Minister of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha addressed the Conference that sought to promote implementation of programmes for reducing urban poverty based on convergence with other related schemes.

Implementation of National Urban Livelihoods Mission which was started in September, 2013 began in 2014 in 790 cities and towns and the Government later extended it to all the 4,041 statutory cities and towns under the name 'DAY-NULM' giving flexibility to States for its effective implementation.

Based on the experience of its implementation during the last two years, the Government is keen to remove hurdles to enable more credit flow for self-employment of urban poor and scale up skill training.

Ministry of HUPA has proposed to appoint a central Nodal Agency for speeding up disbursal of bank loans to urban poor besides involving Non-Banking Finance Institutions and micro-credit agencies for delivery of loans.

NGOs are also proposed to be involved in a big way for giving a fillip to urban poverty mitigation programmes. Bank lending for self-employment is proposed to be dovetailed with MUDRA loans under Prime Minister's MUDRA Yojana.

DAY-NULM aims at reducing urban poverty and vulnerability of urban poor households by improving livelihood opportunities through skill training and skill upgradation for self-employment and salaried employment in private sector, subsidised bank loans for setting up micro-enterprises by individuals and groups, organising urban poor into Self-Help Groups, building shelters for urban homeless and certification of street vendors and assisting them with necessary infrastructure.

Success so far and way ahead:

During the last two years, 4.54 lakh urban poor have been imparted skill training out of which about one lakh i.e about 22% were either got jobs or self-employed. Ministry of HUPA aims at scaling up placement or self-employment to at least 70% for which strategies were discussed.

Regarding credit flow at subsidised interest rate of 7%, total loans amounting to Rs. 551 cr were disbursed to 73,476 beneficiaries for setting up individual micro-enterprises at an average loan amount of Rs. 75,000/- which is much lower than the permitted loan of Rs.2.00 lakhs each. Another Rs. 54 cr was disbursed for setting up 2,527 group enterprises at an average loan amount of Rs. 3.11 lakh as against the permissible limit of Rs. 10.00 lakh each.

Under the component of organising urban poor into Self-Help Groups, a total of 1,02,485 groups have been formed during the last two years. Loans totaling Rs. 3,173 cr were disbursed to 61,012 groups of which Andhra Pradesh and Telangana accounted for 90%. Ministry of HUPA is keen to bridge this North-South gap.

Lead performers so far:

Lead performers under various components of DAY-NULM during the last two years are as below:
Skill training:

Tamil Nadu leads having trained 1.05 lakh urban poor followed by Madhya Pradesh (72,701), West Bengal (45,034), Karnataka (28,334) and Odisha (23,700).

Number of persons assisted for setting up individual and group enterprises:

Tamil Nadu-28,096, Madhya Pradesh-18,223, Uttar Pradesh-10,304, Karnataka-8,211 and Andhra Pradesh-7,624.

Number of Self-Help Groups formed:

Tamil Nadu-21,872, Uttar Pradesh-11,245, Chattisgarh-9,528, Telangana-6,408, Maharashtra-6,097 and Madhya Pradesh-5,921.

The Conference was organised to enable the urban poor meet their aspirations of employment in the context of growing migration to urban poor in line with the assertion of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi that urbanisation mitigates poverty.