Govt pensioners a harried lot

Tribune News Service

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Amritsar, June 14

The Punjab government pensioners, who are drawing pension from the State Bank of India, are a harried lot due to ignorance of its Centralised Pension Processing Cell (CPPC), which facilitates pension disbursal to employees.

Punjab Employees Rights Protection and Welfare Union general secretary BR Preenja said the CPPC, situated at Panchkula (Haryana), was not following rules pertaining to the release of pension to family members after passing away of the pensioner.

Citing the example of a pensioner, late Jagir Dutt, Prinja said the widow of the late pensioner had to struggle a lot to get it. He said Jagir Dutt had expired on April 29 last year. He claimed that the bank did not make the payment of the DA arrears to his widow despite her three letters to the assistant manager, Centralised Pension Processing Cell, Panchkula.

Meanwhile, the state government announced that arrears of the dearness allowance from July 1, 2013 to January 31, 2014 would be paid to pensioners in August, 2014. Finally, the case was taken up with the relevant quarters and it became clear that late Jagir Dutt was alive during the period. Hence, his widow was eligible to receive the payment of DA arrear as she was a joint account holder. Thus, she received payment after months struggle, but without any interest on delayed payment.

Preenja stated that the rule 5.3 of the Punjab Financial Rules allowed pensioners to nominate any member of his family to receive the life-time arrear, besides the arrear becoming due after the death of pensioner. “Since the CPPC acts as a drawing and disbursing authority, so naturally the nominations are required to be registered by it,” he added. He said there were many other shortcomings like branches disbursing pension did not have entire record.