BC Sakhi Yojana can benefit more if 30 percent of the banking correspondents are women, says an SBI report.
The report released this week says that the scheme, which involves self-help group members at the grassroots level serving as banking correspondents, has the potential to benefit a larger base of women.
The SBI report also pointed out that the central government’s scheme BC Sakhi Yojana could offer a boost to women’s participation in the labor force.
Pointing out that the public sector banks have just about 2% of women as banking correspondents, it also said that in the private sector, only 11.2 percent of women are banking correspondents.
News reports highlighted that while 55% of Jan Dhan accounts are owned by women, some of them are inoperative.
According to the report, apart from the bank sakhis, a policy should be framed to recruit at least 30 percent of the total workforce as women BCs. They should be deployed in locations where access and usage of the accounts by women are low. The government has launched the ‘Mission One GP One BC Sakhi’ program to create a pool of 1.25 lakh trained and certified women SHG members as a Sakhi.
