October 2, 2002	Wednesday	Rajab 24, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 1: For 79-year-old Saleem Aslam (not his real name), Senior Citizens Day was just another frustrating day.

For this humble retired federal civil servant, who has an aged wife and two unmarried daughters to support, October 1 was yet another fruitless day spent in trying to find out the status of his application for reimbursement of an eye operation that he had three months ago at a government hospital in Islamabad. Aslam’s story is a classic case of the pensioner having to “run” (with his walking stick!) from pillar to post in the bureaucratic maze simply to try and get a right that is his due.

The problem began right after his eye operation when he wanted to get the forms from the hospital to apply for the reimbursement. He was referred to one counter after another before he finally got the form. Then he had to get the form attested from a drugstore and after that, go back to the hospital to have the form counter- attested there.

When he produced the form at the hospital, he was told that he had the wrong form: it was an old, outdated form. “But,” he protested, “you guys were the ones who gave me this form!”

“The guy that gave it to you didn’t know it was an old form,” came the quick reply without a hint of sorry or regret. “Here is the new form. Get it attested from the drugstore and then bring it back.”

Back to the drugstore, he went for attestation again, and then he brought the new form back to the hospital for it to be counter-attested.

Then he had to go to the government office from where he retired to submit the reimbursement application there. That office was then supposed to send his application to the department concerned in the ministry of health.

Weeks passed and he decided to find out, through a contact he had in a another ministry, what had happened to his application. His contact, a deputy secretary, found out that his application had been stuck for a month at the bottom of a pile of other applications in that department in the health ministry.

It would have remained there for ages under that pile had not the deputy secretary dug up Saleem Aslam’s application and managed to get it approved from the higher officer in the ministry, who happened to be a colleague of the deputy secretary.

Then the application went back to the ministry, which was supposed to issue the letter clearing the bill to the Accountant General, Pakistan Revenue (AGPR).

The letter was eventually issued by the ministry, but it had to go back through Mr Aslam’s former office again to reach AGPR, the office which issues the cheque for the reimbursement. Until today, nearly four months after his eye operation, Mr Aslam, whose only source of income is his meagre pension, still has not received the reimbursement cheque.

“It is inhuman to put an old pensioner like me through this kind of bureaucratic red-tape,” was Mr Aslam’s comment about his plight.

Compare Mr Aslam’s experience with that of a retired officer from the Army. The latter had come all the way from another city to be treated at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Rawalpindi for a serious liver ailment.

He simply had to produce his benefit entitlement card at CMH, was treated without having to make any form of monetary payment, and now he is recovering nicely back in his home city with no worry about applying and getting a reimbursement.

This is the simple, no-fuss procedure at CMH whenever he needs to seek treatment there, whether it be for a minor ailment or a major operation. For Saleem Aslam on the other hand, he has to go through the torturous procedure of applying for reimbursement each and every time he seeks treatment at a government hospital.

Why can’t all pensioners have this very important facility of a benefit entitlement card? is the poignant question that Mr Aslam asks. “It will cut down a lot of unnecessary work and make everybody’s job easier.”

“Pensioners like us should only need to apply once through the necessary departments and ministries for a medical benefit entitlement card. This entitlement card, together with all the necessary information and record of the pensioner available at the touch of the computer, will make the life of an old pensioner like me that much easier,” concluded Mr Aslam.