KARACHI, Sept 4: The Employees Old-Age Benefit Institute has not removed the red tape a retired person has to go through every month to obtain his pension.
Well-placed sources told Dawn on Wednesday that the condition of drawing pension only from the authorized branches of the Habib Bank created a lot of trouble for old pensioners who quite often had to go to distant bank branches.
“The EOBI offers Rs10 per pensioner to the authorized branches of the Habib Bank. Since the EOBI registers more than 9,000 pensioners every month on average, other nationalized commercial banks could also be lured into making a profit by paying out EOBI pensions,” they pointed out.
They added that at the very least the EOBI could get the Habib Bank to authorize all its branches to pay out pensions.
EOBI officials agree that the condition of drawing pension only from the authorized branches of the Habib Bank is an absurd one.
They, however, explain that the reason why the EOBI prefers the Habib Bank to other nationalized commercial banks is that all the incoming and outgoing monetary transactions of the EOBI take place through the Habib Bank.
The EOBI came into operation on July 1, 1976, under the EOBI Act 1976, which applies to those industrial, business, trade and other establishments which have 10 or more than 10 employees. Such establishments include private schools, welfare organizations, large shops, factories, mills, etc.
According to the documents obtained by Dawn, some 47,257 establishments are registered with the EOBI, extending pension cover to as many as 1,770,705 people. The EOBI has collected Rs16.941 billion from employers since coming into operation. During this period, it has paid more than Rs8.7 billion to pensioners. The government paid a matching grant of Rs4.45 billion from July 1986 to July 1995.
Sitting with other pensioners at the Nursery branch of the Habib Bank, septuagenarian Qazi Mohammad Fazal, a former employee of an advertising company, told Dawn on Wednesday morning that he had been planning to come to collect his pension since Sept 1. “I have not been well, and it is very difficult for me to come all the way from my place to Nursery to collect my pension. If the Habib Bank could authorize the branches close to my place, it would make my life very easy. Besides, I would be able to draw my pension on the first day of the month.”
As a rule, pensioners suffer from health problems more frequently than the young. Consequently, all too often, they find themselves in a position where they have to procure an authorization paper so that a person may draw the pension on their behalf.
It takes days to get through all the red tape involved in getting a valid authorization paper. Even so, a large number of EOBI pensioners are not even aware of this ‘facility’.
Another pensioner at the Habib Bank Nursery branch said the process of procuring the authorization paper was so cumbersome that he came to the branch himself in spite of his old age and the many health problems he was afflicted with.
