KARACHI: Employees Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) pensioners are facing difficulty in withdrawing pension amounts due to the shift from manual disbursement to withdrawal through debit cards.

While the EOBI successfully shifted over 220,000 pensioners to Bank Alfalah’s digital convenient wallet accounts, many pensioners complained that they were facing problems with withdrawing pension through the automated teller machine (ATM) facility.

The EOBI initiated the process of biometric registration, opening of accounts and issuance of ATM cards at Bank Alfalah branches in May last year.

However, many pensioners complained that after drawing the last pension from National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) branches they did not receive any further amount from Bank Alfalah next month.

Aftab Syed, a pensioner, told Dawn that after drawing his last pension from the NBP, he was asked to withdraw the next pension from Bank Alfalah. When he went to the bank next month, they directed him to consult the NBP instead. On visiting the NBP to claim the amounts, the bank guided him to Bank Alfalah again.

“I have shuttled between the two bank branches without getting any result,” he said.

EOBI Director General Operations Abdul Wahid Uqali told Dawn that the shift from the manual system for pension disbursement to digitisation of the system was in process and the difficulties were caused due to some minor faults.

He further said that many pensioners were not approaching the banks and the EOBI had announced a cut-off date for the completion of the digitisation system of Feb 1, 2017.

Undoubtedly, he said, there could be some shortcomings related to the data records but the system was running smoothly.

The basic objective of introducing ATM cards was to make pensioners’ lives easier, therefore, he urged the pensioners to get registered with Bank Alfalah at the earliest.

After the deadline, EOBI contribution collection and pension disbursement wou­ld be only made through Bank Alfalah, he said.

Published in Dawn December 24th, 2016