Kolkata

After providing bank accounts to 15 crore unbanked people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched three social security schemes, including an insurance cover for less than Re 1 per day, and said that the poor “need empowerment, not aid”.

Modi said Rs 15,800 crore has been deposited in the 15 crore Jan Dhan accounts opened in four months and the scheme to provide cooking gas subsidy directly into bank accounts of beneficiaries has helped stop pilferages and leakages worth hundreds of crores of rupees.

“I told the poor, this nation, this government and our banks are for you… poor do not want ‘sahara’. We need to change how we think. The poor need ‘shakti’,” he said at the event, also attended by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Modi said 80-90 per cent people in the country neither have insurance cover nor any possibility of pension.

While the three schemes will come into force from June 1, the Prime Minister said that in the first seven days of the trail-run, banks have enrolled 5.05 crore people, including 42 lakh from West Bengal.

The schemes — Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY) — were simultaneously launched at 115 locations throughout the country. .