Pension, ration card bifurcation among issues raised
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 3: Jammu Mayor, Rajinder Sharma along with 25 Councillors of Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC), all from BJP, today met Chief Secretary, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta and informed him that Principal Secretary PHE, Shaleen Kabra never attends to the phone calls of elected public representatives while other principal secretaries do it very well.
“Whom will he respond then if he doesn’t respond to elected representatives of public in a democracy,” the Mayor said while expressing his resentment.
The JMC delegation of elected representatives also raised the issue of pensions and ration card bifurcations.
“For getting pension from the Social Welfare Department income certificate is essentially needed and certificate showing Rs. 3000 as income while practically income of the pension seeker remains zero,” Mayor Rajinder Sharma, said adding, “This on one side erodes the credibility of the authority issuing such certificates and on the other the integrity of person getting such certificate remains doubtful.”
He also said that in nuclear families today old parents are not cared by the children and ration cards have names of parents and children together.
Sharma further said that for one over 60 year of age there should be no need of PHH category who is seeking Rs 1000 pension clearly is having a meagre income.
“For widow pension PHH ration card is needed while anyone can be widow. If someone in lower middle class family gets widowed she would not be eligible for pension for lack of PHH ration card. So this category must not be linked with pension cases,” the Mayor added.
“JMC should be given a platoon of 36 sleuths of Security Forces (SFs) to maintain secrecy in operations as presently for operations SSP is contacted for force and the secrecy is not maintained,” Rajinder Sharma said.
He also said that election of Ward Committees should be framed as per 74th Amendment, under which on every 2000 people one representative is elected.
He said, as the rainy season is coming and some Nallahs are to be repaired in emergency and money is not there for that but Rs. 88 crore are there with JMC under Grant In Aid (non-plan) and this money should be allowed to be used by JMC.
The Mayor said that Health Centres and Primary Schools given to JMC should be completely handed over to the Urban Local Body so that Public Clinics could be opened there.
He said that executive engineers of JMC are not having drawing and disbursing powers due to which JMC Commissioner and Chief Accounts Officer are overburdened while in other departments drawing and disbursement powers are with executive engineers and they also clear bills of contractors and in JMC same is done by the Commissioner.
“If the Commissioner clears bills worth Rs. one crore daily how can he be able to do other works of the local body,” Sharma asked demanding the drawing and disbursing powers be given to the executive engineers.
He further said that in AMRUT-2, money should be released as early as possible so that the much needed 26 tube wells might be dug as soon as possible and public may not face problem in coming Summer.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
