Hyderabad: In response to several citizens offering to donate money for the state government’s prestigious Rythu Bandhu scheme, the government has set up a link where they can do so.
The government did not expect any donations for the scheme. But when people offered to donate, it quickly began taking measures to facilitate the process of involving citizens.
Minister K.T. Rama Rao on Sunday shared the link to donate money in a tweet, saying, “Telangana launched a unique farmer emp-owerment scheme — Rythu Bandhu, this week. Many kind-he-arted individuals have come forward to don-ate to this noble initiative (sic)”
People can contribute on https://www.esevaonline.telangana.gov.in/rythubandhu/Rythbandhucontribution.htm.
Donors need to fill in their name, contact number, email ID, date of birth, gender and address along with the amount they wish to contribute.
Following this, the donors will be directed to a payment gateway, where in they can pay using debit card, credit card, netbanking or PayTM. Users will be charged conve-nience charges and GST. Once they complete the transaction, they will receive the confirmation page wi-th a reference number.
Earlier, Mr Rama Rao said the government did not need to doubt what farmers were doing with the money they had received from the investment subsidy scheme.
He was replying to one Sai Bhargav who questioned Mr Rao on Twitter.
“How are you going to ensure that the money given to farmers under Rythu Bandhu Scheme will be used by them only for the purpose intended?”
Mr Bhargave said he was willing to donate to the cause if there was a mechanism in place to ensure no misuse. Replying to this, Mr Rao said, “Wish our banks asked these questions before trusting industry bigwigs with thousands of crores of loans, wish we in government asked ourselves same tough questions before offering monetary incentives to industry, we need not doubt our farmers with this basic.”
Mr Bhargav suggested that there were are better foolproof ways of ensuring, without doubting, that the money was used for the purpose it was intended.He suggested giving specialised debit cards which only work at seed or fertiliser shops. Reacting to this, one Bittu said farmers don’t use the money for seeds and fertilisers alone; they have to pay daily-wage labourers, for ploughing and other services in cash.
One Manthri Raj said “investment support to farmers is nice but failed to set cut-off rules, why (are) one acre and 100 acres land owners treated equally? There must be a limit of units 5-10 acres (sic).
He said in his village a rich farmer with 130 acres gets Rs 10.4 lakh at the rate of Rs 8,000 per acre. In the name of aiding farmers, the government is giving money to the rich, he said.
