District Mission Management Unit (DMMU) of Nagaland State Rural Livelihood Mission (NSRLM) organized a two-day training on micro finance consultancy for Community Cadres (CCs) and Block Level Federation (BLF) of Mon RD block under the Financial Inclusion Initiatives Program on March 22 and 23 at DRDA resource centre, Mon town.
A press release issued by district coordinator (FI) NSRLM Mon, Rajuselie Lhousa stated that project director DRDA Mon, Wennyei Konyak, while addressing the trainees in the inaugural function, shared his enthusiasm to be involved with NRLM, as the program was basically for the empowerment of the rural population. He said that the government has entrusted the women-folk with taking up the main role in NRLM because women were the pillars of the family knowing every household problem and its remedy. He encouraged the women saying that successful implementation of NRLM could invite banks which can help Self Help Groups (SHGs) through loans. Wennyei stated that hard work and dedication would enable people to receive the rights and entitlements offered in the program.
He also cautioned that failure of one member can put the rest of the group into trouble. He further appealed to the participants to make a practicable five year plan and see that each SHG is able to generate a corpus of rupees five lakhs.
District program manager, M. Temjen Longchar, in his speech, said that with the coming of the NRLM program to the district, a lot of changes had taken place. Sharing his experiences in Mon, he said that a benefit is the availability of organic vegetables. He encouraged the BLF to set targets for the SHGs for production of goods and channelize them for export. He was optimistic that once the BLF begins functioning successfully, the system of today’s business system in Mon could see a U-turn very soon.
Chief Manager SBI Mon branch, KK Sharma stated that the existence of departments and banks is predicated on their purpose of developing society for which funds are allocated as per the requirements of the public. The question, according to him, is how the public utilize the funds. He said that a financial institution offers two type of loans viz. economic activity for the poor to generate income while consumption loans are for income-based category to, for example, construct a house or purchase a car. He also informed the participants that the government offers various social security schemes through the banks, for instance the Atal Pension Yojana (APY) and the like. He encouraged the farmers to avail KCC loans to develop their agricultural activities. Field officer SBI, Rakesh also shared relevant issues pertaining to his subject matter.
Earlier in the keynote address, district coordinator for Financial Inclusion (FI) NSRLM Mon, Rajuselie Lhousa reported some achievements during the last three years which included organizing a saving bank account opening drive, Financial Literacy Camps (FLC) and Credit Linkage, which has reached all the villages.
The training was attended by the Village Facilitators (VF) and Master Book Keepers (MBK) from all the 18 villages, besides the DMMU and BMMU staff.