Thiruvananthapuram: The welfare standing committee of city corporation is closely scrutinizing applications for
social welfare pension owing to surge in the number of applicants for pension in the city.
The officials have recently detected cases where the applicants for
old-age pension owned shops and received rent on monthly basis and still applied for welfare pension. The councillors are also being directed to look for applicants who live with their son or daughter who are able to take care of them.
The corporation has been forced to embark on a strict filtration process as the surging number of applicants regardless of their eligibility has deprived many of the eligible applicants who don't have anything but the monthly pension of Rs 1,100 to meet their basic needs.
The finance department has been repeatedly instructing local bodies to assess the background of many of the applicants to ensure that pension reaches only the most deserving people and there by the financial stability of state government would not be rattled. As per one of the rules, all beneficiaries of social welfare pension may submit an affidavit stating that he/she is not a service pensioner, they don’t own land more than two acres and they don’t pay income tax. As for those who avail widow pension, they are supposed to submit a self-attested testimony every December to the secretary of the local body that they are not re-married.
The welfare standing committee has been scrutinizing each application mainly with regard to living circumstances of applicants. “We have come across cases where they live with the children who are well-settled. In that case a most deserving person might be deprived of welfare pension. The state government has instructed all local bodies to ensure transfer of money only to the deserving people,” said Geetha Gopal, chairperson, welfare standing committee.
Of all the city corporations in the state, the Thiruvananthapuram city corporation distributes welfare pension to the highest number of beneficiaries. The corporation distributes five types of welfare pensions to 74,616 beneficiaries of which 50,331 are females and 24,285 are males. The biggest allotment is reserved for distribution of old-age pension with 38,329 beneficiaries. The widow pension also requires huge amount as there are 25,341 beneficiaries in the city.
The officials say that they have not been able to track down duplication in the recent past in cases where beneficiaries availing widow pension got remarried and those receiving old-age pension passed away and pension continued to be received by the relatives.
The number of beneficiaries is set to rise in the city are there are nearly 20,000 applications which are pending to be uploaded in the website as part of data entry.
