Kollam: The government on Friday made one step closer to meeting one of its key electoral promises to deliver welfare pensions at the doorsteps by launching a pilot project at Mayyanadu on Friday. At the state-level inauguration of the project to distribute pension through cooperative banks, the Mayyanad Regional Cooperative Bank, the Umayanalloor Service Cooperative Bank and the Koottikkada Cooperative Bank together distributed pensions to over 5000 beneficiaries at their houses across 23 wards in the panchayat.
Those who had their pensions pending for long time got their dues cleared as art of the project. The scheme is aimed at bringing big relief to the pensioners obviating the need to stand in long queues in front of local self-government offices to get their pension. It also aims at curbing the practice of persons receiving multiple welfare pensions with the implementation of Aadhar-linked pensioning system as the new guidelines by the finance department makes Aadhar mandatory for pensioners.
The cabinet had earlier decided to increase all welfare pensions to Rs 1000 and distribute them at their homes through cooperative banks but the beneficiary list has not been prepared fully yet. The Information Kerala Mission is in charge of collecting the details of beneficiaries. The welfare pensions were earlier distributed through post offices, resulting in complaints of delay in distribution. The experiment to transfer the money to the pensioners’ bank accounts and through local body offices also met with failure as the aged beneficiaries found them inconvenient.
