Kerala CM V.S. Achuthanandan will formally announce the waiver of loans taken by fishermen from Matsyafed until 2007, for housing and buying fishing equipment, at function here on January 23. The Cabinet had issued a decision on December 9 after accepting the recommendations of the Fishermen’s Debt relief Commission. Based on this decision the government has issued necessary orders.
Fisheries Minister S. Sarma informed that loans totalling Rs.126.87 crore were being written off in the first phase. This included Rs.115.04 crore loaned by primary societies under the Mastyafed with funding from the National Cooperative Development Corporation. It is expected that this would benefit 48,355 fishermen. Besides, 9,891 fishermen would benefit from the waiver of housing loans funded by HUDCO through the societies.
According to the Minister loans taken from cooperative and commercial banks would be considered for waiver by the Commission in the second phase. The Commission had received nearly 1.10 lakh applications for debt waiver and more than half of these had now been acted upon. While the law enacted for providing the debt relief covered only loans availed by fishermen up to December 31, 2007, the government had already decided to extend the benefit to families of fishermen who had died in accidents after that date.
