Helping pensioners their aim

Rajiv Mahajan

The Himachal Pradesh State Pensioners’ Association has been organising its annual function since its inception in 1995 and honouring octogenarians every year. 

The association was founded by SL Gupta, a retired official of the Public Works Department. He has been devoting most of his time after his retirement in solving problems relating to pensions and other financial benefits of pensioners in the lower Kangra areas. 

Government pensioners, who have settled out of the state after their retirement, are also indebted to the association, as it took up their discrepancies and other problems of their financial benefits right from the local departmental authorities concerned to the top brass in the state bureaucracy.

The association working selflessly and in transparent manner has also been organising a ‘Samman Samaroh’ every year to honour those, who are above 80-year-old. The association honoured octogenarian Som Raj, Jaishi Ram, Krishna Raina, Dharam Pal, Baryam Singh, RS Chambial and Prem Dass Sahotra in its annual function organised last week here. Initially, the association was raised with 52 members only, but now, it has over 1,000 members in the region. Significantly, the association has its members from retired class-IV employees to class-I officers, who have served in various government departments of the state.

SL Gupta said the association had recently met Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur in Sundernagar and raised its demand to convert pension allowance into basic additional pension, so that they could not be deprived of Dearness Allowance benefit. He said granting pension increment of 5, 10 and 15 per cent, after attaining 60, 70 and 75 years of age, respectively, was a longstanding demand of the association, but the previous Virbhadra government in spite of granting basic pension increment had sanctioned pension allowance. “But after raising the demand of converting pension allowance into pension increment, former Virbhadra government had, however, accepted in principal and announced the same, but could not notify it,” he revealed. He said the association had also raised the demand of travelling concession equal to one month’s basic pension after a gap to two years to pensioners on the pattern of Punjab Government before CM Jai Ram Thakur.

Lauding the selfless services being rendered by the association, Harnam Kaur (90), a resident of nearby Nagni village, and a widow of a Health Department employee, said: “Not only did my family pension got revised to 40 per cent, but Rs 2.13 lakh was also credited in my pension bank account as pension arrear this month and all credit goes to the association.” 

“Reshma Devi (56) of Gangath in Indora, whose husband Amar Singh died during service in the Public Works Department, said the association had taken up her case of pay scale revision of her late husband with the authorities concerned, following which she started getting revised family pension and also got arrear of Rs 1.50 lakh.” 

“Rakesh Gupta, a retired executive engineer of the PWD and resident of Ward Number 8, Nurpur, moved his case for the revision of pension through the association and started getting revised basic pension and also got pension arrear to the tune of Rs 15.67 lakh.