meerut a group of 400 women have been travelling from areas around meerut to the dms office every day for the past week demanding relief on repayment of their microfinance loans the micro enterprises that the women used to run have not been generating any money in cashdry villages and they do not have any new currency to repay the installments the women have taken loans ranging from rs 30000 to rs 40000 from private micro finance companies such as janalakshmi sks microfinance fusion microfinance satin credit care and sv creditline they had used the loans to set up small sewing embroidery and knitting centres of their own which mainly relied on cash most of the women do not have bank accounts and the ones who do operate on zero balance as they rely on cash on a daily basis for their working capital many of these women some the sole breadwinners of their families allege that collection agents of micro finance institutions have shown no lenience post the demonetisation move on november 8 carrying an infant on her lap sadiya begum from kithore 25 km from meerut brings out a crumpled piece of paper detailing the amounts owed by her i owe rs 1610 for this month my sewing business has stopped because customers are not able to pay due to the cash crunch i had saved one rs 500 note but have not been able to exchange it as the bank in our village has limited supply of cash let alone pay the installment i am not even able to buy groceries for my family she said preeti sharma a resident of lakhwaya 15 km from meerut said they collection agents come to our house every day and ask us for money though they know very well we have no means of paying installments in these trying times when we tell them we have no money to buy even food they yell at us and say they dont care sharma had set up her embroidery business with the loan money which has stopped generating funds now nargis from ahmadnagar 20 km from city who took a rs 40000 loan to set up her stitching business is completely broke mfis by definition provide loans to people who do not have access to formal banking and thus all transactions are in cash the rbi on november 21 had announced a guideline with respect to loan repayment to microfinance institutions wherein it stated if an end client needs extra time to make arrangements for the new notes for repayment of the loan then the lending institution may give that time collection agents however seemed unaware of this guideline on the condition of anonymity one such agent with an mfi working in the region told toi no such guideline has been passed down to us by higher authorities in the company the authorities meanwhile remain in a fix additional district magistrate finance gaurav verma said it is not in our hands to