NEW DELHI: As desired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the social welfare department will update or verify contact details of beneficiaries receiving financial assistance under old-age, widow and disability pension scheme every month.
The order to carry out verification exercise, issued by special secretary of the department Rashmi Singh, says that non-availability of contact details serves as a hurdle in qualitative evaluation of the schemes. Singh fixed September 3 deadline to collate the data.
“All the district social welfare officers are hereby directed to send a list of pensioners in their respective districts with the mobile number and current address of the beneficiaries. Further, if any contact detail and phone number is incomplete, the district social welfare offices has to give specific reasons in this regard and also efforts should be made by them to get the same collected.
This may be given top priority and non-compliances will be viewed seriously,” reads the order. Under the Delhi government’s pension schemes, 5 lakh senior citizens, 2.5 lakh widows and 1 lakh differently-abled persons receive monthly monetary grant. Widows and differently- abled persons are entitled to Rs 2,500 while senior citizens below 70 years get Rs 2,000 and those above 70 years get Rs 2,500.
Earlier on August 9, Social Welfare Minister Rajendra Pal Gautam had written to the secretary about the matter flagged by Kejriwal. Gautam had asked the department the collect desired details within four weeks. “It has been found that mobile numbers of beneficiaries are not available. The department will take an exercise to collect the mobile numbers of beneficiaries and all these numbers will be verified by the department,” he had written.