The welfare schemes introduced by the State Government for security of senior citizens are not reaching beneficiaries, alleged members of the Senior Citizens’ Forum of Uttara on the outskirts of the capital city on Friday.
“We welcome the State Government for declaring many welfare schemes for the benefit of senior citizens. But in reality, the benefit is not reaching us due to non-cooperative attitude of district machinery,” the 44-member forum, which is yet to be registered, alleged in a statement.
Forum president Dr Amarendra Nath Mohanty raised two points in support of the allegation.
“We formed the Senior Citizens’ Forum a few months back. Within a short period of time, we organised a health camp, a Jal Chhatra and a plantation drive in our locality. In April 2017, we submitted an application with all documents to get our forum registered with the administration. Though we have gone to ADM, OSD and police umpteen times, nobody has listened to us yet. Even none of these officers have once asked to take a seat when chairs in their offices were vacant,” lamented members.Raising a second point, Mohanty said, “We felt demoralised when the Puri SP denied individual registration of all 44 members.
He said this facility is only applicable to urban locality. But our request to consider our case being residents of suburban locality was also turned down.”
This matter was also twitted to Home Department and the State Police headquarters but there is no reply till now, he said.
The members have demanded that the higher authorities help them get registered the forum at the earliest so that they can work under Government rule as conscious citizens.