Social Security Schemes - fill up vacancies and complete opening of accounts immediately

Chief Secretary GoWB along with Additional Chief Secretary/ Principal Secretary of eight departments reviewed ongoing development schemes of Govt with district officials at Behrampore on 19th September 2009 for 5 hours. We will be writing to concerned field officers in coming few weeks to do follow up on the decisions/ suo motu actions to improve the performance to the satisfaction of target beneficiaries/ people.

At present we cover more than 100000 families under different pensions. It is reported that a large number of cases under Old Age pension, Disability Pensions, widow pension of social welfare department are vacant and proposals from the Panchayat Samities are not being submitted to DSWO. These cases are related to additional quota sanctioned in 2008-09, fund already placed to BDOs. SDOs may please take personal review and impress upon the blocks to submit all cases by October, 2009. As per the reports at our end there are 763 vacancies in Sadar, 289 in Tehatta, 537 in Ranaghat and 197 in Kalyani Sub division till date.

Payment of all kinds of pensions has to be done through post office/ bank accounts as decided by Govt. So far accounts have been opened in the name of 50 % beneficiaries only under IGNOAPS, less than 50 % in case of social welfare pension. Steps must be taken to complete it 100 % so that the new system can be started. Block level data management cell headed by BIO must be strengthened immediately and database of all pension cases, formats for sending advice to banks/ post office etc should be kept in readiness. Payments to blocks shall be done through e-transfer, thereafter, BDO can deposit monthly requirement to Bank/ Head Post Office along with scroll for payment to beneficiaries from their counters. These is urgent need for awareness and coordination meetings with all agencies involved.

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Some general queries regarding Rural Household Survey and BPL list - Answers

While reviewing the identification of beneficiaries out of RHS in different blocks I am surprised to come across lots of queries from field officers, which needs to be clarified at GP level. Some of the queries and their answers are :-

• BPL list finalised and published by the administration is subjected to modifications/ changes by GPs unauthorisedly, thereby inviting complaints, which are difficult to be handled by Blocks. What can be done in such cases?
• Answer is supply of updated BPL list of each sansad to GPs duly authenticated on each page by block office with official seal, page certificate on top sheet. Family details of BPL families must also be supplied. GP must be asked to keep one xerox copy in the office for perusal of public. Members from public and elected members of PRIs may be offered copies on payment of cost basis for transparency. CD may also be supplied to GPs in the format which is read only.
• There are errors in the BPL family particulrs like name and title of members, non inclusion of name of genuine family member eg mother in the RHS, age is incorrectly noted in database, sansad missing, sansads of one GP incorporated in another GP due to technical error etc. Can such errors be rectified? How?
• All corrections in the RHS against the final database can be allowed through software except addition or deletion of households or modification of score. There is no approval required to rectify the obvious errors like title, age, name of the other family members in the RHS provided that it is done at the BDO's end after verifying the authentiated document in claim of correct title, age, name of the family member, may be after conducting field enquiry by Govt staff. However, in case of addition of family in RHS or deletion the database needs prior approval of Govt. All corrections as referred above should be sent to district for validation and updation of database.