Thiruvananthapuram: The LDF and BJP blamed each other when the issue of alive and breathing pensioners being declared dead came up for discussion on Wednesday’ council meeting. Welfare Standing Committee chairperson Sindhu S.S. apologised for the problems.
BJP’s M.R. Gopan said that ever since the council and the government took charge, welfare pension system has gone haywire. He said that the problems started after the government decided to deliver pensions through cooperative banks and its officials.
He alleged that there were many waiting for pensions for over a year. The councillors should have been involved in the process of eliminating ineligible beneficiaries, said BJP’s V.G. Girikumar. “Why are councillors not trusted upon?” he asked.
He demanded that the officials responsible for the errors should face disciplinary action.
As BJP continued blaming the state government, LDF retorted saying that the errors crept in because of problems with the Aadhaar card. Mayor V. K. Prasanth said, “The team which studied had used information from Aadhaar card to figure out who is not alive. Their pension accounts have been temporarily blocked. It will be solved, the moment they give an affidavit declaring that they are alive. It is no different from EPF pensioners having to give an affidavit every year about them being alive.”
Interestingly, CPI’s Solomon Vettucaud did not support the LDF view. “Even if many ineligible persons were drawing pensions, it was even more unjust to deny pensions to even one eligible pensioner,” he said. There were 74,649 welfare pensioners in Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, of which 2,467 were found ineligible in the study conducted by Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation, according to Welfare Standing Committee chairperson Sindhu S. S. More than 1,500 people were dead, and 935 had vehicles, according to the Institute findings.
But following the Onam holidays, many who were listed as dead came to the corporation to ask why their pension accounts were frozen. Similarly, many others have complained that they have been wrongly listed as owners of either 1000cc four-wheelers or houses of over 1200 square feet.
