Minutes of the Advisory Committee meeting for web based Pensioners’ Portal held on 05.09.11

Minutes of the Advisory Committee meeting for web based Pensioners’ Portal held on 05.09.11 under the Chairmanship of Secretary (Pension, AR&PG).

No. 41-30/2011-P&PW(C)

Government of India

Ministry of Personnel, P.G. and Pensions

Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare

3rd Floor, Lok Nayak Bhavan,

New Delhi, Dated the 20th September 2011

OFFICE MEMORANDUM

Subject:- Minutes of the Advisory Committee meeting for web based Pensioners’ Portal held on 05.09.11 under the Chairmanship of Secretary (Pension, AR&PG).

   Please find enclosed herewith minutes of the Advisory Committee Meeting, held on 05.09.2011 under the Chairpersonship of Secretary (Pension, AR&PG), for further necessary action. The action taken on various points concerning your respective Ministries/ Departments may also be intimated to this Department at the earliest.

sd/-

(Tripti P. Ghosh)

Director

MINUTES OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING FOR WEB-BASED PENSIONERS’ PORTAL HELD ON 05.09.11 UNDER THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF SECRETARY (PENSION, AR&PG).

   A meeting of the Advisory Committee for web-based Pensioners’ Portal under NeGP was held on 05.09.11 under the Chairmanship of Secretary (Pension, AR&PG), in Lok Nayak Bhawan, New Delhi to seek the advice/ suggestions for fine tuning the work of the Portal during the next Plan period (2012-17), based on the experience gathered in the past and suggestions/ requirements put forth by the pensioners.

A list of participants is annexed

   Secretary (Pension, AR&PG) welcomed the participants and initiated the discussion by apprising them of the purpose of convening this meeting. He apprised the participants of the action taken on the decisions of Advisory Committee Meeting held on 19.07.10.

During the meeting the following issues were discussed by the members of Advisory Committee.

   1. The members of Advisory Committee suggested that the components like rent for hiring of accommodation and remuneration for Data Entry Operator should be included in the Plan proposal for the 12th Plan.

   2. Concerned Departments/ authorities as well as banks/ post office may be advised to provide all co-operation to the representatives of identified Pensioners’ Associations for redressal of pensioner grievances.

   3. List of invalid characters need to be displayed at suitable location in Grievance Registration Format and the limit of the character for recording various details needs to be increased, It has also suggested to make available the final status of the grievance on the portal. The Department clarified that final status is already available in the application.

   4. The grants were given to the 27 pensioners associations during 2007-08 and 2008-09. Secretary (Pension, AR&PG) expressed his concern about the 10 associations who have still not utilized the amount and have not given the utilization certificate and other required documents. The Audit has also adversely commented upon these Associations. It was decided that they should be warned in strict terms to either utilise & send us UCs or return back the grant with interest.

After the detailed discussions the following decisions were taken:-

   1. The scheme of Pensioners Portal needs to be continued during the 12th Plan period (2012-17). As regards components of activities for which Grant in Aid is given to Pensioners Associations, provisions for subsidy towards charges on rent of office premises and remuneration of Data Entry Operator should be considered. A few awareness cum training programmes for the members/ pensioners of Pensioners Association also need to be conducted.

   2. There is need to allow the flexibility of expenditure on individual components within the overall sanctioned grant-in-aid.

   3. Further grants should be given to only those pensioners associations who are functional.

   4. For Pensioners’ Portal, Department of Defence and Ministry of Railways need to provide link for viewing the status of PPO from their website.

   5. To write letters to the Nodal Officers of the Ministries/ Departments to extend necessary cooperation to the office bearers of identified pensioners associations in the matter of redressal of pensioners grievances.

   6. At present, the redressal of grievances of pensioners is taking unduly long time. Ministries/ Departments should fix a time line for redressal of grievances. In this regard guidelines issued by DARPG may be followed and may also be displayed in the portal.

   7. FAQs to be constantly monitored.

   8. For Bank related grievances, DOP&PW may examine the feasibility of directly forwarding the same to the banks to avoid delays in grievance redressal.

   9. For the Ministry of Railways, the representative from the Ministry was asked to provide a separate helpline for pensioners as was available earlier.

   10. It was also decided that the criteria for selection of Pensioners Association may be made available in the website so that more Pensioners Associations may be encouraged to apply.

The meeting ended with a vote of thanks to the Chair.

Source:circulars.nic.in