Daily Times

Aged pensioners continue to suffer at the hands of their banks as their accounts were locked owing to unavailability of biometric verification and submission of Alive Certificates.

Every month their pension amount is supposed to be credited into their bank accounts through the concerned district accounts offices as per government rules, but in March State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) issued a circular to all the banks directing them to get all the pensioners biometrically verified which most of them did, but they little did they knew that after their verification, Alive Certificate is also to be submitted to the banks individually.

When they took their cheques to get the cash on 1st April, they were told that their accounts have been locked either for their failure of verification or non-submission of alive certificates, leaving them astonished. Most banks branches remain closed on weekends hence they faced hardships in this massive price-hike era to get meagre pension amount.

Several pensioners including Abdul Ghafoor, Muhammad Bux, Rahim Bux, Dost Muhammad, Ghulam Qadir and others told this scribe on Saturday that it is purely nonsense to ask for Alive certificates when they have already been biometrically verified few days ago. They said, had they been dead, biometric would have been impossible, and noted that still demanding alive certificates amounts to mental torture to the aged people who served the nation for their life. They said banks are constantly harassing them on one pretext or the other, and SBP is also issuing unnecessary circulars adding insult to the injury, which have caused them tremendous troubles in this hot weather, as they have to stand in long queues to get their rightful earnings for which they have given their blood.

When asked, a senior officer of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), posted in Larkana, on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said that SBP had issued circular of biometric verification of all pensioners or else the banks were directed to stop disbursement of pension amount of March, but, he added, submission of alive certificates is the requirement of NBP. Asked as to how a bank can get a living certificate from a pensioner who has been physically and biometrically verified recently, he replied that higher bank officers should be blamed for this double policy. He agreed that pensioners have suffered a lot for this indecent decision and unlawful policy which should have been avoided. The affected pensioners have demanded the higher authorities to take immediate notice of this malpractice and resolve it once for all so that senior citizens should not suffer for sheer negligence of others.