Guide to avail loans without approaching usurers released

MADURAI: Tirunelveli city police and district administration released a guide on Friday to help aspirants apply for loans directly through banks and to avail subsidies while availing loans to start a business. Copies of the 40-page booklet were distributed to the visitors at a ‘loan mela’ organized by the public sector banks and cooperative banks.
Deputy Commissioner of police (law and order) for Tirunelveli city A Saravanan said that they came up with the idea of the guide following incidents of suicide attempts by usury victims.“Two years ago a family of four committed suicide at the district collectorate due to their inability to repay the usurers. A couple of months ago a similar attempt by a family was foiled at the collectorate,” he said.
The officer said that there are also incidents of people borrowing small amounts in the range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh from usurers, for which they end up paying several lakh rupees as interest. “Affected persons who were forced to continue repaying despite repaying a few fold more than what they borrowed have also been petitioned,” he said.
To put an end to such incidents and to create awareness among the people on the simple documentation procedures that are required by public, private sector and cooperative banks, the police and the district administration came up with the idea of releasing the guide to help people avail hassle free loans.
District collector Shilpa Prabhakar Satish handed over the first copy of the book in the presence of the deputy commissioner and bank officials. Around 1,500 copies were distributed on Friday. The police will circulate more copies during the weekly resident interactions programmes.