RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi Municipal Corporation (RMC) has not paid 1,975 of its former employees their pensions for six months, even though the civic agency has enough money in its account.

Pensioners Action Committee Chairman Tahir Mehmood Khan told Dawn the former employees had not been paid their pensions even though they had made several requests to the Punjab government in this regard.

He said the former employees had not been paid for six months and were now finding it difficult to pay for daily expenses.

“Strangely, the RMC and district administration have asked the civic body’s former employees who worked in municipal schools and dispensaries that they will get their pensions from the education and health departments, but they were employees of the municipal corporation,” he said.

The now defunct CDGR had mismanaged the pensioners’ accounts, claims district admin officer

The government has not made any system for pensioners to be paid on time and in Punjab and especially in Rawalpindi, they were paid after six months and that too after they protested on the roads, he added.

“It will be difficult for senior citizens to launch protests for their rights every month,” he said.

A senior official of the district administration told Dawn this was due to the negligence of the now defunct City District Government Rawalpindi’s (CDGR) finance department which did not properly manage the pensioners’ accounts between 2013 and 2016 the effects of which were felt during the last two years.

He said the CDGR had deposited the pensioner’s money in national saving and fixed it for five years, that the remaining amount was not properly maintained and there was no planning for it which “created problems for pensioners”.

When asked, RMC Finance Officer Shahzad Gondal said the district administration has paid the civic body Rs14.3 million to pay 1,975 of its pensioners and that the provincial government had promise to provide additional grants for pensioners.

The payment of pensions has started and pensioners will be given their outstanding dues soon, he promised.

Mr Gondal explained that the former employees will be given their pensions by various departments so that former teachers will be paid by the education department, former paramedics will be paid by the health department and so on.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2017