KARACHI: It is the saddest sight watching senior citizens leaning heavily on their orthopaedic canes, bent over walkers or on wheelchairs wait in queue for their turn to collect a meagre pension every month.

“We line up here like beggars early morning at the start of every month for our pension though realistically speaking most of us get it around the 12th of each month. Please go away child. Why do you want to write about us? No one cares about us old lot. You will just end up making us a laughing stock,” said Abdul Sattar Rehmani, a pensioner with sad eyes waiting outside a National Bank of Pakistan branch at the beginning of yet another month.

The line he was in was very long. It went on to the main road. “And what do we stand here for hours for? A sum of three to five thousand rupees,” he said. “These days not even a couple of people can make ends meet on Rs10,000 and coming here hoping to collect our little money we also spend on bus and taxi fare,” he added.

“I spent a lifetime working to earn an honest living. And now after retirement this is how life treats me,” said the gentleman who retired many years ago as a junior officer from what was then known as the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation.

No end to pensioners’ woes

One day when the senior citizens waited in queue some three hours before the branch’s opening this Ramazan there was some confusion about tokens. “We came here soon after Sahri and now when the branch opened at 8am, no one from the bank even cared to inform us that they weren’t going by giving out tokens. So while we were lined up here those, mostly the women folk, who went upstairs directly to wait there realised that the bank staff was collecting our booklets and calling us as they got to process our names from each book. Those who were upstairs submitted their books and got ahead in line while we waited outside unaware of all this,” complained Iftikhar Ahmed, a retired engineer with his passport-like pension book in hand.

“The bank too opens at 8am during Ramazan but the staff arrive at around 9am and their computers are usually down and start working at around noon. There is no end to this injustice,” he said.

“I had heard the government had increased pension amounts but there has been no change here as yet,” said Firdous Bibi, widow of an engineer, who said she had come to the bank branch in North Nazimabad from Jauhar Town. “And I don’t know why the cashier didn’t pay me my entire amount, too. He kept Rs1,500 from my Rs6,000 without explaining why. When I asked anyway, he said ‘move away, others are waiting’. Is he pocketing my money? If he is, I’m sure he will also get away with it as I can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Even though the air-conditioning was on in the bank branch with rows of chairs for the people occupied and several sitting on the floor as well while hundreds crowded up at the front near the cashier’s’ windows, it was extremely hot and humid. “There are so many of us. We all breathe and it affects the cooling. I have myself witnessed one death here in this very bank branch when this poor man couldn’t tolerate the heat and just collapsed. Two others fainted and were taken away in an ambulance. They were regulars here. I didn’t see them again so I presume they passed on as well,” said Khuda Bakhsh Baloch, a former Sui Southern Gas Company employee.

Asked if they could nominate someone else like a son, daughter or younger sibling to collect their pension each month, Umeed Raza Syed, a very frail looking gentleman leaning over a walker, explained that the bank staff needed to see and make sure that the person getting the pension was the same in the pension book.

“We need to come in person as they want to see if we are still alive. What if I’m dead and someone else keeps coming here to collect my pension? Of course, I can nominate someone to do it for me but it is temporary, for three months only. And quite frankly, I nor anyone else here has the patience or stamina to also stand in queue outside the Employees’ Old-Age Benefit Institution office like this for hours. Coming here again and again is enough torture,” he said.

“I have heard how they treat senior citizens in the West. There they give them extra facilities. And here they just seem angry at us for surviving this long,” cried Sikandar Begum, the widow of a driver.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2015

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