Transport department achieves 100% implementation of Gatidhara scheme

Kolkata: The state Transport department has set a record by achieving more than 100 percent in terms of implementing the Gatidhara scheme in the 2017-18 financial year.

The state Transport department had set a target of bringing in 10,000 unemployed youths under the Gatidhara project. With necessary and timely steps taken by officials of the state Transport department, a total of 10,553 unemployed youths have received the benefits of the scheme.

It may be mentioned that in the previous two fiscals too, the state government has made an achievement in implementing 100 percent of the project. In the 2015-16 fiscal, the state Transport department had brought 5,200 unemployed youths under the beneficiary scheme and as many as 8,500 was the figure of the same in the 2016-17 financial year.

In the past three financial years, the state Transport department has brought in a total of 24,253 unemployed youths under the scheme. This has come up as a source of income for the youths and it has also created a new dimension for the state's transport sector.

In the last fiscal, the state Transport department has become successful in breaking its own records of the previous years, by bringing in 553 more unemployed youths under the scheme than the set target.

Gatidhara is a dream project of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, to help unemployed youths get a means of livelihood. Under the scheme, the Mamata Banerjee government provides a financial support of Rs 1 lakh to each beneficiary, to buy a commercial vehicle.

The beneficiaries are also helped to get bank loans for the remaining amount of the vehicle's price and they clear the same in monthly instalments. The Chief Minister had named the scheme and she had designed its logo as well, which remains printed on all the vehicles bought under the scheme.

It may be recalled that Suvendu Adhikari, the state Transport minister, had given away offer letters to 2,000 beneficiaries in one go on September 13 in 2017.

Sources said that if everything goes as planned, then the state Transport department will be bringing in another 10,000 unemployed youths in the 2018-19 financial year.

The process of filling in forms to apply for the scheme in the current fiscal would also begin soon. The state Transport department had also set up centres across the state, to help youths get necessary information on the scheme. The felicitators there had also helped the youths in applying for the same.