Daily Times

LAHORE: The Accountant General Office (AG Office) Punjab has converted almost 84.6 percent of pensioners’ data online from manual system and the remaining data will be made online by the end of this year, Daily Times learnt on Friday.

As per the information gathered by Daily Times, the online system had made it easier for the pensioners to get their pension in time through their bank accounts rather than standing in long queues and presenting their pension books and papers every time to the bank’s officer dealing with pension and had also reduced the hassle of the pensioners for visiting AG Office for pension matters. Officials from the AG Office Punjab further informed Daily Times that the pensioners were getting the pension on time due to the online system as previously, the manual system caused errors and delays due to the given banking hours, availability of the bank staff and lengthy procedures which resulted in dealing with a few pensioners each day. The officials further informed Daily Times that this online system was being implemented since the last five years but due to lack of awareness among pensioners and avoiding the online system, AG Office was able to get only 84 percent of the pensioners online.

Naseem Hussain, a 75-year-old retired government servant of Punjab said, “The procedure of getting the pension online was a tiring one and demanded a lot of hassle and patience. I had to make almost 20 visits to my bank’s branch, treasury office and AG Office for getting this done. Sometimes the relevant forms were unavailable with the bank and many a times the treasury officers dealing with my matter were unavailable. I had to wait for hours and hours to get my papers signed and complete the procedure at treasury office and then at AG Office too. The behaviour of the staff dealing with pensioners was degrading and not suitable for aged people. Though the procedure was disturbing for people my age but now I am at ease that I don’t have to run to the bank every time for my pension and neither it is delayed. I have the bank’s ATM card and on first of every month I can get the pension easily. This was a good step taken by the AG Office but the mechanism still needs to be improved and it should be a one window operation rather than making the aged pensioners run to three offices for the completion of this procedure. During this procedure I observed many pensioners losing heart and interest and never got their pensions online.”

Punjab Accountant General Mian Shujauddin Zaka, while talking to Daily Times on the matter said that they had made almost 84.6 percent of pensioners’ data online and remaining 15.4 percent data would be online by the end of this year.

“It was important to make the pensioners data online as the old manual mechanism was outdated and AG Office adopted new techniques and technologies to make the pension system online. As per this mechanism, the pension of all the pensioners in Punjab is transferred into their given bank accounts. There are some pensioners who have incomplete documents and we have requested their departments to provide us the complete data so that their pension is made online. Some pensioners have ongoing cases in courts and unless they get the court’s decision, their pension cannot be made online, whereas some pensioners are still hesitating in getting their pensions online and do not have bank accounts,” he said.

Further talking on the matter he said that making the system online was not an easy task as there were almost 650,000 pensioners in Punjab.

“The data was initially computerised, then shared with all the banks online and later software was developed through which pensions were transferred in banks. Now any pensioner by opening an account in any bank in Punjab can get pension. For the ease of the pensioners, counter cells at AG Office have been made from where they can get all information about their pension and online system. Moreover, AG Office workers are also dealing with the problems and complaints of the pensioners. We have made a transparent mechanism at AG Office for the pensioners and have tried eliminating the corruption here, but still if any pensioner comes across any corruption issue or other problems they can approach me,” Mian Shujauddin Zaka said.

Published in Daily Times, June 4^th 2018.