NEW DELHI: The Social Welfare Department is initiating a re-verification drive for all ongoing schemes to identify genuine beneficiaries, officials said on Friday. According to them, all District Social Welfare Officers (DSWOs) have been instructed to attend District Development Committee meetings and verify the status reports through on-ground inspections.
A consolidated report will be submitted to the chief minister following the verification, a senior official said.
“All DSWOs of the Department of Social Welfare are hereby directed to personally attend the meetings of the District Development Committee, as per schedule, with the status report with regard to the ongoing schemes and programmes run by the Department of Social Welfare,” a circular issued by the department read.
Officials said the BJP government, after assuming power, is focused on identifying fake and missing beneficiaries of social schemes run by various departments. For this, multiple campaigns are being run to determine the real picture of actual beneficiaries.
According to officials, the latest directive is part of this broader campaign. A couple of days ago, this newspaper reported that teams had been constituted to identify missing pensioners and re-verify all the beneficiaries under the Social Welfare Department. As per officials, more than 50,000 pensioners are missing, which includes 40,000 old age pensioners. “They haven’t come forward for verification of their credentials as pensioners. They are missing from the given address. Money is being transferred to the accounts of these elderly pension beneficiaries for the past one year, but the accounts are not active,” a senior government official said.
Irregularities have been found in social schemes from other departments as well. Prior to the Social Welfare Department, the Women and Child Development Department also investigated the pension scheme for distressed women. Under this, about 3.80 lakh women receive `2,500 per month. When the eligibility of 2.28 lakh women was checked randomly, 11% of them were found to be ineligible.