Bhubaneswar: In a bid to bring the newspaper hawkers under social security, chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday announced COVID assistance and accident compensation for newspaper hawkers in the state.
The chief minister said the state government is taking steps to cover the newspaper hawkers under social security for the challenging works they have been doing during the COVID pandemic. As part of this, the state government will pay Rs 6,000 as special COVID assistance to each of them. He will distribute the compensation to 7,259 hawkers amounting to total Rs 4.35 lakh later on the day.
He also announced compensation for accident victims among the hawkers. In case of death of a hawker due to accident, the government will pay Rs 2 lakh as compensation to the family and Rs 1 lakh for natural death.
If any hawker loses two parts of the body in mishap, he will be entitled to compensation of Rs 80,000 and in case of loss of a single part, Rs 40,000, the chief minister announced.
Stating that a detailed database of the hawkers was being prepared, Naveen said they will be provided identity card to facilitate their works. Besides, the government is planning to build work sheds for them at district level, he added.
It may be noted that the chief minister in the last two days announced livelihood assistance for BSKY card holders, house repair money for poor and needy and several initiatives for Mission Shakti members.
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