Tarun Karthick
Port Blair, 26 April 2023
The Department of Social Welfare is committed towards the welfare of the vulnerable sections of society and accordingly provides social security pensions @ Rs. 2500/- per month to 25779 numbers of Senior Citizens, Widows, Destitute and Divyangs beneficiaries. Similarly, Rs. 3000/- per month is provided to 1364 Senior Citizens who are 80 years of age and above.
In order to address the issues regarding delay in sanction of social security pensions, non-receipt of pensions in the account of the beneficiaries and various other reasons, the Department is organising a series of Awareness-cum-Registration Camps in all the 5 ICDS Projects covering all individual Gram Panchayat which were spearheaded by the Child Development Project Officers by involving the Officers of the line Departments viz. Revenue, Health, Pradhans, Councillors, so that the new beneficiaries are registered instantly and issues of old beneficiaries are sorted out on the spot.
The Awareness-cum Registration Camps which got underway since April 17, 2023 received positive feedback from the community at large. A total of 391 new beneficiaries were enrolled during the awareness camps under different projects which includes 263 new beneficiaries for the Old Age Pension Scheme, 72 for Widow Pension Scheme, 36 for Destitute Allowance and 20 of Disability Allowance.
The Department in its efforts to provide doorstep delivery of services also collected the Life Certificates of pensioners numbering 6060 during the course of the camps. The Awareness–cum-Registration Camps will continue till April 28, 2023 in all the ICDS Projects and the Department is hopeful that more beneficiaries would be enrolled.