SHG women told to create awareness on Zika virus

Kurnool: District Collector Ch Vijaymohan on Tuesday exhorted self-help groups members to sensitise people to prevent pregnant women and children falling prey to Zika virus and take out rallies involving Asha workers, ANMs and Anganwadi workers in villages to alert people.

Addressing women’s groups through video conference from the MRO office at Betamcherla, he said that puddles and places far from sanitation are the breeding grounds for mosquitoes. He said that the virus spreads through mosquitoes that bite during day time. He called for precautions to check breeding of
mosquitoes.

He appealed to village federations of self-help groups and mandal-level federations to hold meetings with group members and make preventing the virus as one of their agenda to sensitise them on prevention of the virus spread. As there was no vaccine for the virus, only precautions held the key, he said adding the mosquito biting pregnant women will have disastrous effect on the yet to be born.

Later, reviewing pending drinking water projects in the district, he called for speeding up execution of Handri-Neeva and Galeru-Nagari project canal works meeting the deadline for daily schedule of work. He wanted the engineering officials to pay special attention to this.

Under Handri-Neeva Sujala Sravanti project, 4.89 lakh cubic meters of soil and concrete works are in pending. Galeru-Nagari canal works are progressing at snail’s pace, he said asking authorities to bring problems, if any, to his notice.

Engineering officials brought to the Collector’s notice about a large volume of contractors’ bills remained unsettled since October and the Cabinet had cleared revised proposals of canal works.

The Collector asked them to arrange a meeting with the contractors of the two projects on February 11. The bills would be cleared as and when a relevant GO has been issued. He asked the engineers to motivate the contractors to complete the canal works that are kept pending for the past four months or so. He directed the Handri-Neeva Sujala Sravanti officials to speed up Pandikona reservoir works. Handri-Neeva and Galeru-Nagari engineering officials took part in the meeting.

Participating in a mandal-level bankers’ committee meeting held at Koilkuntla on Tuesday, he urged bankers to cooperate with the district administration in releasing bank-linkage loans to SC, ST, BC and minority self-help groups.

For the current financial year, the self-employment units should be grounded by March-end, he said assuring the bankers to launch a special drive to overcome non-performing assets and overdraft problems. Highlighting the importance of bankers in economic development of the district, he asked the bankers to not to delay advancing loans to the eligible.

He pointed out that the poor are availing loans from private money lenders. He asked the mandal parishad development officer to ensure that self-employment units sanctioned through various corporations are grounded.

When a bank manager highlighted that the bank faced NPA problem from 38 self-help groups in Koilkuntla, he directed the DRDA Project Director Ramakrishna to take up a special drive to solve the problem. He asked the Project Director to launch a drive to constitute self-help groups in Alluru village.

SC Corporation Executive Director Sitamalakshmi, BC Corporation Executive Director Ramana, Minority Corporation Executive Director Karimullah, SBI Chief Managers and others took part in the meeting.