Plan to phase out manual disbursement of pensions

Vikarabad:   Now onwards old-age pensions, pensions to widows and physically challenged will be credited directly into bank accounts or the post-office savings bank accounts as disbursement of pension manually is posing problems to officials. 

Therefore, the district rural development agency (DRDA) officials are busy collecting Aadhar and bank or post office savings bank account numbers of the pensioners. 

The government has been disbursing Rs 1000 to each aged person per month, while it disburses Rs 1500 per month to each of the widows and the physically challenged.  

The government has been credited the amount in banks in urban areas and the post offices in rural areas as direct disbursement by hand is problematic. 

Biometric system of recording pension disbursal has been implemented in rural areas.  Pension disbursal mechanism is afflicted with the problems like insufficient funds with the bank, shortage of staff in post-offices, late disbursal of pensions, biometric machine not recognizing the beneficiary’s finger prints and so on. 

Sometimes, the aged have to go to the relevant government office to collect the pension even if the age does not permit them to move out of their homes. 

To overcome the problems, government has decided to credit the pension amount in the savings bank accounts of the beneficiaries. The officials are busy gathering Aadhaar and savings bank account details of the pensioners in all the 18 mandals. 

The state government has been incurring at least Rs 12.8 crore a month to disburse pension among the beneficiaries. 

The pensioners moving out of their village are facing problems in collecting their pension. Collecting the pension along with the arrears has become a cumbersome process.  To overcome these problems, the government is planning direct crediting of the pension in savings bank accounts of pensioners. 

Among the beneficiaries, 37,652 are the aged and 49,145 are widows. So far the officials have gathered data of 90037 beneficiaries and are still to collect information from 14,978 beneficiaries.