The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : A widow's 16-year wait for pension

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 04, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

A widow's 16-year wait for pension

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, OCT. 3. Sixty-year-old Adhiamma, a resident of Agaram in north Chennai, has been waiting a long time for her family pension. In fact, she has waiting for over 16 years, ever since her soldier-husband died. She has knocked on many doors — in fact an official of the Ex-Servicemen's Welfare Board said all were aware of her case — but is yet to get the pension.

"It is difficult. You know how much we would have gone through to reach here," she told S.N. Nair, Principal Director (Employment), who had come down from the Office of the Director-General Resettlement, New Delhi. Adhiamma was with her son, a hearing-impaired man in his Twenties.

Commodore Nair, visibly upset, ordered the local welfare board that the case files should be on his table by the time he reached Delhi. The local Army Station Commander, Y.K. Goorha, could only call it an "aberration."

G. Shanthi from Vellore is faced with a different problem. Her husband vanished in 1994, while reporting for duty in Jabalpur. There has been no news of him since then. An excruciatingly long process of corresponding with the Army authorities began later that year. Finally in 2002, she received a letter from the Signals (Records) office, Jabalpur, declaring her husband a deserter. "The letter also informed us that he was dismissed in 1997," she said. Shanthi lived with her mother and makes ends meet with great difficulty.

The Pallavaram Army Camp Commanding Officer, G. Venu, asked what the Army could do in a case like this. "We want to help everyone. But what can we do here expect hand over whatever is due for the period he was in service," he said.

The rally was a time to give vent to long-pending grievances of former soldiers and their families. The officials at the venue, the Army Camp at Pallavaram here, offered to look into their problems, but this did not satisfy the agitated ex-servicemen.

The problems included non-receipt of pensions, lack of facilities in Military Hospitals, absence of job opportunities and the dismissive attitude of those manning the ex-servicemen's welfare boards.

Solutions

There are about 90,000 ex-servicemen in the State. About 400 former soldiers and next of kin turned up today to seek solutions to their problems.

Most of the ex-servicemen were sore over what some of them described as "perennial non-availability of medicines" in the Army clinics. When one ex-serviceman pointedly talked about the lack of courtesy at the Army hospital, the Ex-servicemen's Contributory Health Scheme regional centre joint director, A. Arumugham, said: "Ek hath se tali nahi bhajthi." (It takes two hands to clap). He advised the agitated former havildar to "cooperate" with the hospital authorities and to "work with the system." Another soldier, Arumugham, who was discharged in 1969 wanted to know when the hospital would buy an ambulance and weighing machines.

Systemic problem

Commodore Nair said that most of the problems would have been taken note of earlier had the system been more effective. The State level bodies — the Rajya Sainik Board — should be headed by a Brigadier or Colonel (or an equivalent rank officer from the Navy or Air Force) while at the district level, the Zilla Boards should be headed by a Lieutenant Colonel or Major or an officer of equivalent rank from the Navy or Air Force. But this was not done in most States. Tamil Nadu was no exception.

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