New Delhi: The minimum pension has been increased to Rs9,000 per person besides a two-fold hike in ex-gratia amount for central government employees, union minister Jitendra Singh said on Thursday.
Addressing
the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee of Voluntary Agencies (Scova) in the
city, he said almost 88% of pension accounts have been seeded to Aadhaar. There
are about 50-55 lakh pensioners in the country, said Singh, minister of state
in Prime Minister’s office.
He
further said that minimum pension has been increased to Rs9,000 per person and
ex-gratia amount has been increased from Rs10-15 lakh to Rs25-35 lakh, as per a
release issued by personnel ministry.
The
Scova meeting is organised by the Department of Pensions and Pensioners’
Welfare (DoP&PW). Singh said there is a need to put in place an
institutionalised mechanism to make good use of the knowledge, experience and
efforts of the retired employees which can help in the value addition to the
current scenario.
He
said the retired employees are a healthy and productive workforce for India and
we need to streamline and channelise their energies in a productive direction.
“We should learn from the pensioners’ experience,” said Singh. The minister
also said that the DoP&PW should be reoriented in such a way that
pensioners become a part of nation building process.
Many
issues related to pensioners were discussed threadbare, such as revision of
Pension Payment Orders of Pre-2006 pensioners, health insurance scheme for
pensioners including those residing in non-Central Government Health Service
(CGHS) area and special higher family pension for widows of the war disabled
invalidated out of service, etc. The meeting was attended by the member of
pensioners associations and senior officers of the important departments of the
central government.
