The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated the Integrated Grievance Cell & Call Center for Pensioners set up by the Department of Pension and Pensioners Welfare, here today. The Center has been launched for Central Government pensioners at Janpath Bhawan, in New Delhi. The Secretary, DARPG and Department of Pension and Pensioners Welfare, Shri K. V. Eapen and senior officers of the Department were also present on the occasion. The Minister also interacted with the Pensioners Welfare Executives and understood the response received by them from the pensioners.Dr Jitendra Singh congratulated the Department for the initiative of creating a call centre for the pensioners. He said that this is one of the Department’s big announcements in the first 100 days of the Government with an objective to make life easy for our Pensioners. The Minister said that, in addition to resolving grievances of the pensioners, it will help in value addition to the whole process, as the pensioners will gradually provide inputs and suggestions in the form of feedback that will help the Department in the long run. This centre will also act as pressure on the departments to resolve the problems of the elderly pensioners, he added.The Minister said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, the Government has taken many initiatives for the welfare of pensioners in the last five years and the Department of Pensions has become more active and focused with various out of box initiatives to provide ease of living to the pensioners. The Minister spoke about initiatives to provide ease of governance such as Digital Life Certificates (DLCs), Anubahv and Bhavishya. He expressed his assurance that these centres will play a productive role in future.
The Minister also mentioned about the All India Pension Adalat held on September 18, 2018, which was an attempt to devote one day in the year to Pensioners. These Adalats were conducted across Ministries/Departments throughout the country including all the central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs).Keeping in view the great discomfort experienced by very senior and ailing Pensioners in queuing up outside Banks in the month of November to give their Life Certificate, the Department undertook a path breaking initiative: Involve Pensioners' Associations in 8 cities on a pilot basis and obtain ‘Digital Life certificate From Home’ of such Pensioners. This was a pilot program conducted in Noida/Delhi, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Mumbai, Mysore, Vadodara, Thiruvananthapuram & Bengaluru. Till December last year, 2,480 number of DLCs were obtained from home of aged Pensioners. This year, this facility would be extended from 8 to 20 cities (additional ones are Hyderabad, Ranchi, Bhuvneshwar, Jaipur, Thrissur, Kolkata, Cuttack, Chennai, Guwahati, Madurai, Balasore, Jalandhar, Ahmadabad, Allahabad and Pune).A major step towards Digitization was the ‘Bhavishya’ software, indigenously made by the Department of Pensions and meant to be a common platform for processing of pension cases on this platform by all civil Ministries and Departments of Government of India. This software brought on a common platform all the stakeholders who were till date decentralized on to a single platform.
As on date in 792 offices pension papers are moving electronically from retiree to Head of Office, Pay and Account Office and to CPAO. Till date, 6950 DDOs are on the board of Bhavishya and currently processing pension cases of approximately 35,000 retiring/retired employees/family pensioners. This application has so far cumulatively processed cases in respect of about 1,00,000 employees till date. After converting Ministries/Departments, Bhavishya has been expanded to cover Central Government employees working under UTs and Delhi Police Administration. The online CPENGRAM system along with the Mobile App and also registering of grievances received by post have been very effective in addressing the grievances in the past. The faith of the Pensioners has gone up in the system due to which yearly more and more Pensioners have taken resort to get their grievances sorted out through CPENGRAMS. Although, this call centre facility has been created primarily for the retired officials of Central Government, the State Government retired officials are also calling on this number for their pension related grievances. This facility will further be expanded keeping in view the volume of call traffic received through the system. The objective is to promote Ease of registering grievance and resolution of the same as a measure of Good Governance.