The Hindu : Business : Woes of senior citizens

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 18, 2004

Business

Business

Woes of senior citizens

J. Radhakrishnan, a senior citizen who has held high positions in public sector banking, has sent this letter on Senior Citizens Savings Scheme 2004.

WHEN THE Finance Minister announced a special savings scheme applicable to senior citizens offering 9 per cent interest per annum on their deposits, at a time when they had no avenues of a better return on their savings, everybody heaved a sigh of relief.

But in the actual implementation of the scheme, the rules prescribed baffle the senior citizens and put them to more strain and worries than they have bargained for.

It is stated that a senior citizen, whether husband or wife, can make only one deposit in a month. This condition has no rationale at all. Further, it is discriminatory. For example, if the husband, a senior citizen, makes a deposit, his wife who is also a senior citizen and has her separate savings, cannot open a deposit account and has to wait for the next month to make the deposit. The result is that the investible amount remains without earning interest. When a ceiling of Rs.15 lakhs has been prescribed, why at all a rule like the above?

The distress does not stop there. For the same person/persons who make(s) deposits month after month, and the application form requires information of the previous deposits made, where is the need to affix photo graphs on each application, besides furnishing fresh sets of photo copies of ration cards/PAN cards/age proof and the like?

Again there is no provision for automatic credit of the first accrued interest in the savings account maintained in the same post office where the interest of many of the senior citizen deposits in the MIS is credited month after month. The post office requires the senior citizen depositor to be personally present for receipt of the first quarter interest. The authorisation given to agents who remit the deposits is not entertained. This procedure baffles any logic. When the agent can deposit lakhs and lakhs on behalf of depositors, why should this skewed procedure be insisted?

The result of all these is that many senior citizens, most of them past 70, weak and infirm, have to wait in the queue on the first payment date. The post offices do not have enough staff to quickly attend to them. The slips used for withdrawal are brittle and incapable of retrieval in the mass of papers stacked in the post office. The Postal Department appears to feel that they do not have enough work on their core assignment with the result the post offices now sell mutual fund units, milk coupons, telephone cards and other instruments. But what one sees is that there is total delay and hardship to depositors who have to wait in cramped unkempt post offices for withdrawals, redemptions and deposits. Will the authorities re-examine the whole procedure and make it more consumer friendly, with less of paper work and avoidance of the personal attendance of senior citizens, when the work could be minimised by just reference to the previous records and transfer in the books.

Now that there is announcement that banks also will operate this scheme, will things improve dramatically?

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