Thiruvananthapuram: Inordinate delays in disbursing pensions affected pensioners due to scarcity of cash at a handful of pension disbursing sub treasuries in the capital. While long queues could be noticed at some sub treasuries, things were normal in some others. Thara Mani of Kalady, 63, an arthritis patient, prefers to collect her pension from Fort pension treasury as she makes it an opportunity to catch up with old colleagues. On Thursday, as usual, an auto driver from her neighbourhood took her to collect her pension at around 10 am.
However, she had to wait in a chair outside Fort pension treasury until 3 pm for her token number to be called due to the chaos caused by the demonetisation of currency notes a few weeks back. Around 1,500 people had taken tokens at Fort to collect cash on Thursday as panic stricken pensioners chose to collect the maximum amount of money on the first day of pension disbursement. Their woes just multiplied as a network crashed halting cash withdrawal for a while in the afternoon.
“We had waited in front of one of a dozen counters for an hour when they announced that around 10 pensioners with consecutive token numbers should assemble at a different counter. Here I have been waiting for 20 minutes and I am fed up,” complained Madhavi Amma, a senior citizen. “I met a man who came at 8am and could not get money until 3pm,” she added. Interestingly on a visit to Vellayambalam sub treasury office inside Public office, no queue was noticed. “After core banking came into effect, money can be taken from any pension treasury branch. However, elderly people prefer only certain spots to catch up with old pals. At Vellayambalam we had enough cash but very few turned up,” an official said.
Sub treasuries function at Medical College, Engineering College, Kudappanakunnu Civil station, Vikas Bhavan, Vellayambalam, Malayankeezhu, Vellanad, Vizhinjam and Neyyatinkara among others. Of this, chaos ruled supreme in sub treasuries on the outskirts. At Parassala, the queue began at around 6am. However, towards noon, the issuing of tokens was stopped after there was cash to pay only around 350 people. However, later additional cash of '20 lakh was sent here and the problem was solved.
