The State government and the Chief Justice of Madras High Court should take steps to establish a Pensioners’ Lok Adalat in Madurai HC Bench.
By setting up the adalat in Madurai, pensioners in the southern districts would benefit to a great extent. Presently, in Tamil Nadu, an adalat was functioning in Chennai, which was set up in 2002 by the Tamil Nadu Legal Services Authority, functioning on the Madras High Court campus.
Considering the pensioners’ age and the inconvenience in travelling to Chennai to get relief, the government should open an adalat in the Madurai HC Bench.
A resolution to this effect was passed at the golden jubilee celebrations of the Madurai District Pensioners’ Association meeting, presided over by its president K. Chakrapani.
The meeting passed various resolutions, which included a waiting room in the Collectorate for visiting pensioners.
There are 38,000 pensioners in the district and out of which 28,200 reside in the city limits.
Every day a large number of pensioners visited the Collector’s office. On many occasions, they had to stand in front of the Treasury office for long hours to while their works get done.
A space with seating facility on the campus would help the pensioners.
Unable to pay high rentals, many pensioners are weighing the options to move into old age homes. The government should consider building pensioners’ homes (who do not have their own houses) in each district or they could examine allocation of government-owned houses in Housing Board colonies as given to serving employees based on the last drawn salary/allowance.
For many pensioners, the prevailing rates of rent in the city was high the reason why the government should work out modalities of giving HRA or CCA, the meeting resolved.
The meeting also requested the State government to expedite differences in the pension payments between judicial and other retired employees at the earliest. While thanking Chief Minister Jayalalithaa for announcing several initiatives for pensioners, the members urged that medical reimbursement should not have any ceiling and hoped the State government implemented a comprehensive medical insurance for pensioners on the lines of the serving employees.
