More than 3 lakh street vendors of Jharkhand, who are facing an unprecedented financial crisis because of the lockdown to ward off the novel coronavirus threat, have termed the Centre’s loan facility for them as impractical.

Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had on Thursday announced a Rs 10,000 loan facility for every street vendor through a Rs 5,000-crore fund that is part of the Narendra Modi government's Rs 20 lakh crore fiscal stimulus package to steer India out of the economic crisis precipitated by the pandemic and the lockdown.

Underscoring their inability to repay the loan, the cash-strapped vendors have demanded the conversion of the loan into a grant instead.

The vendors, under the banner of National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), have also tweeted their demand and tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and finance minister Sitharaman.

“How can the street vendors who have lost all their limited savings and are on the brink of starvation owing to the lack of income be expected to repay their loans? So we have started a campaign to demand the conversion of the loan into a grant,” said Sneham Sinha, city manager of Dhanbad area of the NASVI and a member of the town vending committee of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation (DMC).

He said no concrete step had been initiated by the Centre and the state government to engage the street vendors for home delivery of groceries and other essential items.

“Some states such as Bihar have done it,” he said.

In Dhanbad, the civic body had said it would provide passes to allow street vendors to sell vegetables and groceries, but the vendors are still waiting for those passes.

“Not all street vendors have ration cards,” said Sanjeev Singh, who used to sell books and magazines from a roadside stall on Station Road in Dhanbad. “Around 10 per cent of the total 3,978 registered street vendors in Dhanbad are still deprived of the 10kg ration promised during the lockdown by both the Centre and the state government to those without ration cards.”

To add to the woes, Singh said, the zero-balance Jan Dhan accounts of some of the street vendors in Bank of India had been converted into general savings accounts.

“No meeting of the DMC’s town vending committee of street vendors has been held in the last eight months though norms mandate a meeting every three months,” Singh said.

DMC city manager Md Anis said the civic body was working on a plan to provide identity cards to around 1,200 street vendors to allow them to sell vegetables and

groceries. “The process is likely to begin next week,” he said.