Introduce e-pension system, HPSEB pensioners urge government

Our Correspondent

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Chamba, September 11

The HPSEBL Pensioners’ Welfare Association has urged the state government to introduce e-pension system for the pensioners of HP State Electricity Board Limited (HPSEBL) on the analogy of pensioners of other state government departments.

Addressing mediapersons here today, association senior vice-president KD Sharma and general secretary PL Gupta said the e-pension system would certainly go a long way in ensuring the smooth disbursement of pension to the retired employees.By this way, only one agency would look after the pension cases.

They said the data of the retirees’ pension should be uploaded on the website of the board like that of general provident fund (GPF) of the employees so that every pensioner could view his pension details on the website. For this, HPSEB should set up its own data centre rather than relying on the banks.

They suggested that the Chief Accounts Officer of HPSEBL should maintain the records of the pension payment orders (PPOs) of the pensioners and put the pension amount directly in his or her bank account.

These leaders said the banks had so far failed to rectify the pension miscalculations. Even bank officials did not respond to the queries sought by pensioners.

They said there were over 18,000 pensioners of HPSEBL. Out of which the pension cases of 2,000 retirees were still pending, especially of those employees who had retired after March this year. They had not been issued PPOs and their retiral benefits and dues were still pending.

They demanded that medical allowance limit of Rs 60,000 be increased in every electrical division of the board for the wellbeing of pensioners. All medical bills should be disbursed within a set timeframe.

To address the problems of the board’s pensioners, they proposed to set up a grievances committee at the board’s circle level. They asked the government to release the DA instalment, which was announced by Chief Minister recently.

Presiding over the conference, association senior vice-president KD Sharma spoke about the problems being faced by pensioners. He also assured the state government of their wholehearted cooperation in dealing with pension cases.