After linking pensions with Adhaar cards, more than 6,000 senior citizens are facing problems in getting their monthly pensions due to mismatching of finger prints in the banks at the time of withdrawing their monthly pensions. There are total 21,709 pension beneficiaries in Chandigarh under various categories, including 3,518 handicapped, 6,557 widows and 11,634 senior citizens (both male and female) who withdraw their monthly pensions from the authorised bank — ICICI in Chandigarh.
As the UT Social Welfare Department has made it mandatory for all the beneficiaries, including the senior citizens, to obtain their Adhaar cards for access while withdrawing their monthly pensions, it has started creating problems for them. Due to improper circulation of blood, which causes disappearing of fingerprints among elderly persons in most of the cases, the machine meant for testing the finger prints of the beneficiaries’ fails to detect the same. As a result of which, the concerned banks find a reason to deny the monthly pension to the senior citizens.
It has been learnt that the data of such sufferers have crossed even half of the beneficiaries who every month gets Rs500 as pension. However, experts suggested that this problem can be solved through identification of eyes of the beneficiaries, which is called ‘iris scan’. But as the authorised banks do not have the facility of ‘iris scan’, they are shifting their responsibility to the beneficiaries and not releasing their pensions. Admitting the flaw, UT Social Welfare Department director Mandeep Kaur said, “I am personally trying to resolve the issue and have asked the bank authorities for a meeting….It would be resolved soon.”
Pension not to exceed more than Rs1,000
Chandigarh’s Social Welfare Department gives Rs500 monthly old age pension to the senior citizens with minimum age of 60 years under ‘Old Age Pension Scheme’. It has specifically mentioned that the beneficiaries’ monthly income should not exceed Rs1,000 if spouse is not living and Rs1,500 if spouse is living excluding the income of sons who are living separately. Similarly, the beneficiaries should have domicile of Chandigarh.