Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

Old age pension: rise in relief pushes up demand

Photo:S. James

NO SHELTER, no chair: People line up to submit petitions to Madurai Collector U. Sagayam during the weekly grievance day meeting on Monday. —

MADURAI: After the new government announced enhancement of the Old Age Pension (OAP) from Rs 400 to Rs 1,000, a large number of people – from far and near - are visiting the Collector's office here to get their names registered.

The grievance redressal meeting held every Monday at the Collector's office, presided over by U. Sagayam, is virtually dominated by OAP beneficiaries. “Out of the nearly 2,000 persons in the queue, 80 per cent were armed with OAP applications,” staff at the petition counter at the Collectorate said.

The petitioners may be instructed to submit petitions at the respective taluk offices or a group of senior officials in the rank of deputy collectors can be assigned the task of verifying the beneficiaries' applications before enrolling them for the OAP.

The officials said that Mr. Sagayam was keen to interview every applicant seeking OAP. In this case, the Collector may examine the possibility of issuing tokens to the OAP applicants in which the time and date can be specified. Any other mechanism, which would put the senior citizens to least inconvenience, may be worked out as they find it difficult to stand for more than three hours.

More painful was that many differently-abled persons too had to stand in the single queue. A physically challenged woman, who had come to meet the Collector seeking his intervention to protect her from her relatives, waited for over two hours to submit her petition on Monday, the officials said.

Over 1 lakh beneficiaries

A revenue official said that already the district had 1.20 lakh OAP beneficiaries. In the last two years alone, over 50,000 persons were added to the list from the district after the Lok Sabha elections.

The OAP orders were handed over to the beneficiaries by Union Minister M.K. Alagiri.

With an enhanced sum of Rs 1,000, the number was likely to cross the 1.5 lakh- mark, the official added.

The grievance redressal meeting got over at 3.45 p. m on Monday.

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