New Delhi (The Hawk): Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare (DoPPW) has started a series of Awareness Programme for Central Pension Processing Centres and field functionaries handling pension related work in the bank. Since the major Pension Disbursing Authorities are banks, the first such programme in the series is being held for officers of State Bank of India on 20th and 21st June, 2022 at Udaipur, covering the Northern region of country. Four such awareness programmes will be conducted in collaboration with State Bank of India to cover the whole country. On similar lines, awareness programs will be conducted in collaboration with other Pension Disbursing Banks in 2022-23.
Bankers’ Awareness Programme, Udaipur, 20th & 21st June, 2022 has been inaugurated today by Shri V Srinivas, Secretary to Government of India, (DoPPW). Shri Rana Ashutosh Kumar Singh, DMD, SBI, Shri S N Mathur, Joint Secretary (DoPPW), Shri Bhupal Nanda, CCP, CPAO, Shri Subhash Joinwal, CGM, GBSSU, SBI and Shri R K Mishra CGM, SBI, participated in the inauguration ceremony. 50 officers from northern zone from CPPCs and pension dealing branches are participating in this 2 day program. The objective of these programmes is to spread awareness of the various rules and procedures regarding disbursement of pension to Central Government pensioners as well as to update the field functionaries about the changes that take place from time to time through various amendments in the policy and procedures. The purpose of the programme is also to understand issues faced by Bank officials in handling these processes and pensioners’ grievances. Digital life certificate and face authentication technology would be a game changer for pensioners and banks in submission of life certificates. These awareness programmes would serves as huge capacity building exercise for bank officials.
To enhance “Ease of Living” of pensioners and family pensioners, Government of India has taken a number of welfare measures in pension policy as well as digitization of pension related processes. There have been a number of amendments in the pension rules and several clarificatory orders/ instructions have been issued during the last 50 years. These have been compiled and brought out as Central Civil Service (Pension) Rules, 2021 in December, 2021.
Secretary, Shri V Srinivas stressed on providing seamless experience to pensioners through creation of AI/ML enabled Integrated Pensioners Portal, linkage of Department of Pension & Pensioners Welfare portal Bhavishya and SBI portals, creation of Chat bot to ensure seamless interaction between pensioners, Government and banker. Department in collaboration with SBI may set up a technology team for creating the above digital systems as the first deliverables after this program. Utmost attention is to be given on process and people related grievances by SBI. Digital life Certificate was launched in 2014 which is available through Aadhar based bio-metric devices, Indian Post Payments bank’s 1,90,000 Gramin Dak sevaks and Doorstep banking by banks. Face authentication technology was launched in November, 2021 which will transform the way pensioners submit their life certificate. Use of fintech in much larger way will enable quality of life for pensioners.