Utkal Reporter Bureau
Bhubaneswar| 9 Sept 2015
This is complete banking service on-wheel to reach out to the unreachable. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik on Sept9 launched the programme, an unique initiative of Odisha State Cooperative Bank in Bhubaneswar.
A vehicular unit will have an ATM, an information Kiosk and other facility providers on-board to be qualified as full-fledged branch of Central Cooperative Branch (CCB). On Wednesday Naveen Pattnaik flagged of 20 such units from the premises of OSCB in the capital. They will move to 20 targeted blocks in 16 tribal dominated districts of Odisha. The service would be gradually extended to all blocks, assured the CM “so that 55 lac households would have access to banking service.”
Mr Pattnaik said “The state government would like to see all the 314 blocks of Odisha get the Banks on Wheels facility. We will chalk out a plan for the purpose after accessing the impact of the OSCBL’s success,”
To begin with, Keonjhar, Koraput, Sundergarh, Gajapati, Ganjam, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Mayurbhanj, Sambalpur, Angul, Dhenkanal, Boudh, Malkangiri, Nawrangpur, Rayagada and Nayagarh will be the sixteen districts to have the service under “Bank-on- wheels” programme.
The Chief Minister asked the Cooperative Department to make a road map to facilitate easy loan to the farmers. Share of Cooperative Banks in Odisha on all agricultural loans claims 70 percent while it is only 17 percent on national level. He suggested to convert all the Kishan Credit Cards to Smart Cards and to computerize Agricultural Cooperative Societies in a year time as moves in that direction.
Naveen Pattnaik inaugurated the Core Banking Data Management Center i and Core Banking Services in the OSCB premises. He also launched Rupay Debit Cards issued by the OSCB that could be accessed in 1.88 lac ATMs in the country.
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