Retired employees are country's asset, their experience need to be utilised: Jitendra Singh

Retired employees are an asset to the country and their experience and energy should be utilised effectively for the nation's benefit, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday.

They can contribute through their vision, capability and experience, said Singh, the Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.

"Pensioners are an important and valuable asset for the nation and their experience should be utilised for the benefit of the country.

"The number of pensioners is almost equal to the number of serving employees, so their energy needs to be channelised in the right direction," Singh said at a pre-retirement counselling workshop.

The workshop coincided the fourth 'ANUBHAV Awards function, organised by the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.

The workshop focussed on educating retiring employees about various procedures they come across after their retirement. They included pension disbursement process, transfer of pension from one bank to another and the role of Central Pension Processing Centre in pension disbursement, among others.

He also released a booklet titled 'Know Your Retirement Benefits'.

Singh presented the 'ANUBHAV awards, 2019' to the winners and said experiences documented by them should be a subject matter of research.

The Anubhav portal was created in 2015 to preserve the rich experience of retired official in digital form for the future generation to help them learn about and explore various aspects of the governance, culture and development history of various regions.

An award scheme to incentivise and encourage more retiring employees to submit their write-ups was introduced in 2016 and so far, three annual award ceremonies have been held.

Singh also inaugurated the All India Pension Adalat and interacted with the nodal officers and pensioners at the Pension Adalats through a video conference.

The Pension Adalat brings all stakeholders such as aggrieved pensioners, the concerned departments and the bank or Central Government Health Scheme representatives on a common platform.

Secretary (Pensions) K V Eapen said last year, 12,849 cases were taken up by the the Pension Adalat out of which 9,368 were resolved.

A pension dashboard has also been opened for monitoring the grievance redressal mechanism more effectively, Eapen added.