East Godavari district has provided assistance to 506 pregnant women under the DirectCash Transfer system linked through Aadhaar-based services, Collector Neetu Kumari Prasad said.

"Our district provided DCT to 506 pregnant women," Prasad said.

The pregnant women who benefited from the DCT were those who were enrolled under the Janani Surkasha Yojana (JSY) scheme launched by the central government for the benefit of BPL.

The Collector held a meeting with bank officials and Aadhaar-related officials and discussed the various aspects of DCT, its benefits and how far the scheme reached the people and if there were any problems in it.

"We urged the bankers to take further initiative to reach more beneficiaries and explain the advantage of the scheme to them," she said.

In order to create awareness among the people about the scheme, a seminar would be organised here on February 23, she said.

A camp on 'opening of bank account' was organised here from February 5 which was attended by 18,000 people and 10,000 new bank accounts were opened in the district.

"At present we are opening at an average 1,000 bank accounts per day," she added.