Elderly complain of hassles in receiving allowances

BIRATNAGAR, Nov 3: At 75, Nanda Raj Regmi seems to have lost much of his physical strength. He is not able to walk easily. Nor can he stand for long. However, he had to queue up for hours, despite suffering from multiple health problems like heart disease and high blood pressure, to receive his social security allowances on Thursday.

Regmi, who lives in Himali Tol, Biratnagar-4, reached the Bargachhi branch of Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB) early in the morning. [break]

As he was unable to walk up to the bank even with the help of a walking stick, Regmi had to hire a pulling rickshaw. Having painfully waited for his turn for several hours, Regmi received Rs 1500 -- his three months´ social security allowance -- only in the afternoon.

The ordeal that Govinda Upadhyay, a resident of Biratnagar-13, went through was worse than Regmi´s. The 82-year-old had to queue for three days to receive his social security allowance. For the first two days, he had to return empty-handed. He received his allowance only on the third day. “I don´t understand what the government will get by making us suffer like this?” asked an angry Updhyay.

The government has been providing social security allowances -- Rs 500 monthly -- for elderly citizens above 70 years of age as a gesture of honor.

However, elderly people like Regmi and Upadhyay strongly feel that the way they have been made to receive social security allowances is quite humiliating. “We don´t feel honored,” said Upadhyay. “The government has given us unnecessary hassles. It´s absurd.”

The recipients of social security allowances meant for the elderly say all was well until last year. Early in 2011, the government decided to distribute social security allowances to the elderly living in urban areas only through the RBB, which has put them through easily-avoidable hassles. Today, the elderly residing in urban areas first have to go to the municipality and then to the bank for their allowances.

“Earlier, we used to get allowances from the ward office; and we would not have to queue up for hours,” said Regmi. “The ward office would be less crowded. And, if we fell sick, we could ask the ward secretaries to give us our money at home.”

Besides the elderly, physically-disabled people and single women above 60 years of age are also entitled to monthly social security allowances. In Biratnagar, nearly 7,000 elderly people, physically disabled and single women have been receiving allowances. As RBB has only four branches in the sub-metropolitan city, a branch needs to provide allowances to more than 1,500 people, which has caused unnecessarily troubles to the elderly.