E-Paper
Postal department starts door-to-door pension distribution amid lockdown in Ludhiana
The department is using an Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) to carry out the pension distribution process
To ensure that pensioners are not inconvenienced during the ongoing 21-day nationwide lockdown, the department of posts in Ludhiana has initiated door-to-door distribution of pensions in the district.
There are around 2.13 lakh pension beneficiaries in the district. Pensions are being distributed under different government schemes such as old-age pension for men over the age of 65 and women over the age of 58, financial assistance to destitute women and children, and disabled persons.
Notably, only 770 of the beneficiaries have an account with the India Post Payment Bank.
The department is using an Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) to carry out the pension distribution process. The postmen and Gramin Dak Sevaks have been provided with a biometric system, which will help them verify the authenticity of a beneficiary’s claim. The beneficiaries will be handed the pension in hand. However, only the beneficiaries who got their Aaadhar linked to their bank account will be able to avail this facility.
The beneficiaries will be getting a pension for the months of January and February, which will amount to ₹1,500.
Last week, the administration had asked for the department of posts help in distributing pensions to beneficiaries door-to-door as many of them were facing financial difficulties.
Normally, the postal department only distributes the pensions of its own department’s pensioners, railway staff and BSNL employees.
Ludhiana senior superintendent of post offices Amanpeet Singh said the department had started the process of distributing pensions to 29,000 beneficiaries.
“The administration had on Tuesday shared details of pensioners. We have compiled a list of 29,000 pensioners whose particulars including Aadhaar were complete,” Singh said.
He said though the department was distributing pensions door-to-door, pensioners can also draw their pension through the AePS.
In order to cover all pensioners, the postal department has increased the redistribution of the area and expanded the beat of each postman. At present, the department has 170 postmen against 220 posts in Ludhiana.
