Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Thursday asked the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW) to bring out a comprehensive "manual for pensioners" to ensure further ease to retired government employees.
Addressing the 7th all India pension adalat here, he said steps such as extension of family pension to differently abled child of a deceased government employee/pensioner or giving a major hike in the family pension emoluments for divyang children of a deceased government servant/pensioner were not only pension reforms but social reforms having wide implications.
Mr. Singh said the DoPPW had introduced a number of path-breaking reforms, including relaxation in the provision of family pension for divorced daughters and divyangs, introduction of face recognition technology through mobile app for ease in submitting life certificate by elderly pensioners, electronic pension pay order, and assistance from the Postal department to facilitate pension process.
He said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, out-of-the-box ideas and solutions were being devised for the well-being of pensioners.
Mr. Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, said the purpose of pension adalat was to resolve the grievances of beneficiaries in a prompt manner as well as to learn the procedural bottlenecks in disbursal of benefits.
He directed senior officials of the department to come out with a comprehensive “manual for pensioners” based on the feedback received from all the Central ministries/departments and subordinate offices for bringing further ease to pensioners, a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry said.
In the pension adalat, the Minister randomly interacted and obtained feedback from the pensioners, staff and officers dealing with the cases in Delhi and about 225 locations across the country.
Over 1,000 cases were listed for resolution on Thursday and the department is giving special preference to cases pertaining to family pensioners and super senior pensioners aged 80 and above.
V. Srinivas, Secretary, Pension, stated that the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare had ensured end-to-end digitisation of the pension payment process by making BHAVISHYA software mandatory for all the ministries to process their pension cases.
He stated that this software had laid out deadlines for every stakeholder to complete the pension processing so that pension is started on time.
All ministries have been instructed that their nodal officers should conduct weekly review meetings of pending grievances and ensure accountability of government officials concerned.
