TIRUNELVELI: Following complaints of moneylenders occupying some of the houses at the Samaththuvapuram in Valliyoor, Collector M. Jayaraman has ordered to check the genuineness of the occupants.
The Samaththuvapuram has 100 houses, a community hall, playground, ration shop, a park and other basic facilities. As each house in this colony is situated on five cents of land, close to the National Highway, Government Hospital and Tamil Nadu Housing Board apartments, its value has gone up phenomenally. Utilising the poverty of the actual beneficiaries, the moneylenders approached them, gave them some money as loan and took the documents of the houses as collateral. When the beneficiaries could not repay the loan with interest, the moneylenders occupied these houses forcibly and later rented out the houses to others.
On coming to know about this, the Collector asked the Additional Collector of Cheranmahadevi, Veeraraghava Rao, and other officials to inspect the facility. Since the actual beneficiaries could neither sell nor transfer ownership of the houses at Samaththuvapuram to anybody though they had obtained loan from them, the forcible occupation of the moneylenders would not be tolerated and would be viewed very seriously, an official attached to the Revenue Department said.
“Apart from flushing the moneylenders out of the Samaththuvapuram, legal action will be taken against them,” he said.