I RECEIVED an SMS message on my mobile phone from the Employees Old- age Benefit Institution (EOBI) asking me to visit a Telenor or an Easy Paisa shop for a biometric verification, otherwise the EOBI card would be blocked after Nov 22, 2011.

A similar message I received in May asking for getting biometric verification by June 16, 2017. That time I visited a number of Easy Paisa outlets just to find that they do not possess the biometric verification system.

Finally, I visited a Telenor office where after waiting for quite a long time and getting my thumb on the biometric machine, I was told to come back after a few days as the required data was not available.

All the EOBI pensioners are senior citizens, why they should be subjected to such an exercise during the hot season.

Also, when biometric verification facilities are non-existent at Easy Paisa outlets, why was such an SMS message sent? The Telenor offices are mostly one in a city and to visit it one has to travel long distances, sometimes from remote villages in old age.

I wonder whether the EOBI authorities ever thought of those poor pensioners who do not possess a mobile phone or who are too old to read a message?

Many EOBI pensioners are illiterate, and they are being subjected to such an exercise.

The EOBI is an organisation for the help and welfare of the old people, but it seems it is working the other way by asking its pensioners, after every six months, to get biometric verification done.

All over the world senior citizens enjoy special status, but in Pakistan the EOBI administration is unnecessarily subjecting them to such an exercise.

A Senior Citizen

Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2017