Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, as a part of National Good Governance Week, 2024, organized a National Workshop on Effective Redressal of Pension Grievances  on 19^th December, 2024 in New Delhi.

Senior officers from various Ministries & Departments participated in the workshop and benefited from the experiences shared  by the eminent speakers from major stakeholders.

Sh. Dhrubajyoti Sengupta, Joint Secretary (Pension) presented an overview of the CPENGRAMS covering trend of various parameters over last 5 years. He emphasised upon the recent guidelines issued by DOPPW including redressal of grievances within 21 days.

Dr. Shankari Murali, Addl. CGA, Ministry of Finance explained the role of  Central Pension Accounting Office (CPAO) in ensuring rule based disbursement of pension through 19 Pension Disbursing Banks. She further highlighted the functioning of  the existing online grievance redressal system of CPAO.

Ms. Roshni Sohni, DDG, Department of Telecommunications (DOT) elaborated about the System for Accounting and Management of Pension (SAMPANN), a pension processing and disbursement Portal which is ensuring timely and hassle free payment of pension. She attributed the efficacy of this Portal for negligible pendency of telcom pensioners’ grievances beyond 30 days.

Ms. Molly Sengupta, Jt. CGDA, Ministry of Defence discussed about numerous initiatives,  undertaken by MOD to reduce the incidences of grievances. She further underlined the improvement in the quality of redressal over the period.

Sh. Ratnesh Kumar Jha, EDPG, Ministry of Railways emphasised the importance of Advanced Railway Pension Access Network (ARPAN)  in keeping the number of grievances low in spite of having more than 15 lakh railways pensioners.

Sh. Rajesh Kumar, Director, Department of Posts  shared the working of robust grievance redressal mechanism, which has made the Postal Department as one of the best performing organizations.

Sh. V. Srinivas, Secretary (Pension)  appreciated the role of Grievance Nodal Officers from various Ministries/Departments. He credited them with the successful redressal of more than 3.76 lakh pension grievances during 2019-24.

He informed about various initiatives undertaken by DoPPW to make Grievance Redressal Mechanism more sensitive, accessible and meaningful. The role of Inter-Ministerial Review Meetings over long pending cases, Bankers’ Awareness Program for bank related grievances, constant interaction with MoD and Thematic Pension Adalats on PPOs and Super Senior Pensioners were cited. The improved categorization of grievances and Smart  Action Taken Report (ATR) were attributed towards responsive Grievance redressal mechanism.

The humane touch brought in by the inbound Call Centre and outbound Feedback Centre was sufficiently highlighted. The role of Pensioners’ Welfare Associations in creating awareness about online grievance redressal system was also brought in focus.

These ‘Citizen First’ initiatives have been credited to the increased satisfaction about the grievance redressal mechanism.

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NKR/KS

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