Hyderabad: Innumerable pensioners are complaining about online hassles and delays because of which they have to climb a two-storey building to collect their pension at the joint director pension payment office in MJ Market.
There are more than one lakh pensioners in the twin cities, who together draw up to Rs 4 crore. The government hosted an online portal integrated financial management (IFMIS) in 2018 for the convenience of pensioners.
“For the last two weeks I have witnessed many aged pensioners, most of them with knee pains, climb stairs without assistance. On several occasions, I try to help them out, said an employee of the office.
“I am 75 years old, my son lives in Nizamabad. I used to seek help from my neighbour’s daughter to get my pension online. This month as the website started showing errors, I came to collect pension,” said P Shilvaram. “With a great difficulty that stretched up to three hours, I found the address,” he said.
Another pensioner Mohammed Azam said “on the first of every month I used to get a pension online. I do not know why it got delayed this month. I was assisted by the staff here. They explained that there was a problem and it would be rectified soon.”
“In the seven years since my retirement this is the first time that my pension has been delayed. I was told that there is a technical issue. The pension officer did not inform me of the technical snag,” said P Subramanyam, another pensioner.
“The IFMIS online portal had some technical issues. Dealing with one lakh people is a great task for us. We are working on the upgraded software to support the portal. Our technical team is on the job and we will be rectifying the problem,” said N Vinod Rao, pension payment officer, JDPPO.
