Thiruvananthapuram: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced a one to one-and-a-half-year moratorium on the loans of small industrial units, and also a one-year moratorium on housing loan in flood-affected areas. The decision was taken in consultation with the State-Level Bankers' Commmittee.
The banks will not take margin money on loans up to Rs 5 lakh for the reconstruction and repair of houses. Owners of damaged industrial units will also be given new loans without the banks taking the margin money. The chief minister also promised an interest-free loan of up to Rs 10 lakh for those who have lost their industrial units in the floods. Further, Rs 10,000 each would be provided to families returning to their homes from relief camps.
Online damage assessment
An IT-based system will be put in place to correctly assess the damages done to houses and business units. The chief minister said that the affected persons should fill up an online application form on keralarescue.in. Those without internet connection can get it done through Akshaya centres free of cost. “The affected people can also upload the condition of their houses and business units and shops through a mobile app,” the chief minister said.
All the information so collected will be assessed by the concerned local body officials using their technical expertise. “The compensation will be based on this assessment,” the chief minister said.
Preliminary figures show that 7,000 houses have been fully destroyed, and 50,000 partly damaged.
Single-window system for lost documents
He said that the state government was working on a single-window system for the restoration of government documents that had been lost in the floods. “The plan is to collect all the relevant data from all the departments and return the documents through a single window. All government departments have been asked to share their database with the IT Department,” the chief minister said. Basic information like name, address, pin code, age and phone number will be collected from the affected person. Biometric information like fingerprint, too, will be collected.
The distribution of lost documents will be carried out on an experimental basis in a selected panchayat on August 30.
Normalcy sets in
The chief minister said that the state was gradually inching towards normalcy. The number of relief camps have come down to 2c287 from 2,774. The number of families in relief camps have fallen to 2.18 lakh from 2.78 lakh. The total number in relief camps have fallen to 8.69 lakh from 10.41 lakh. The chief minister said that over 30 percent of houses had been cleaned, and 23.36 lakh of 25.6 lakh destroyed power connections had been restored. Of the 16,158 transformers that have been pulled down, 14,314 have become operational.
The Chief Minister's Disaster Relief Fund has accumulated Rs 535 crore till August 23. Pinarayi Vijayan said Rs 242 crore had been sanctioned from the CMDRF on Friday to provide Rs 10,000 each to returning families.
