Dairy-farmers in interior villages of Rajkot will no longer have to spend-hours visiting a bank-branch or hunting ATMs for cash-withdrawals.

Gopal dairy, a member union of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) that markets brand Amul . Has started micro ATM facilities for fourteen milk co-operative societies in those villages where there is no banking facility.

These milk producers can withdraw cash from their village in three days of the month now. This facility started from Anandpara village of Rajkot taluka. The district dairy union deposits the milk procurement price paid to milk producers in their accounts. But bank branches are often around 10 km far from their villages.

A small machine like PoS (point of sale) terminal will be given and managed by the secretary of village co-operative society . This will be similar to the machines that banking correspondents use. The account holder can deposit-or-withdraw money through this machine using a debit-card or Aadhar card linked with the bank account.

“We have received requests from 37 other cooperative societies to start this facility. This wil be replicated after the success of this project. We will provide this facility to only those-villages where the bank-branch and ATM is 8-10 km far,” said Gopal-dairy’s managing-director-Vinod-Vyas.

There are 890 milk-co-operative societies in Rajkot, Morbi, Junagadh and Amreli districts under the milk shed area of Gopal dairy. Out of that 600 have banking facilities in their villages. Nearly 45,000 milk producers are attached with this dairy union that collects an average of 4.50 lakh litre milk per day.

Source : Times of India June 9 2021