Elderly people of Gulmi denied social security allowance for six months

Gulmi / March 30: Elderly people of Gulmi have been deprived of social security allowance for the past six months.

The government provides allowance to certain people including individuals above 70 years of age, single women, persons with disabilities on a monthly basis under the its social security scheme .

Denied the allowance for long, it has become a daily routine of the senior citizens of the district to visit and complain about the problem with concerned bodies like rural municipalities and municipalities. The payment should have been distributed by January 28 as per the Social Security Work Procedure-2073.

When asked Gopal Sen, chairman of VDC secretary welfare protection centre, said a failure of then District Development Committee (DDC) to release the budget for allowance to concerned authority on time is behind the creation of this situation.

However, Local Development Officer Kalpana Shrestha has a different story to tell.

She said although DDC has already sent a cheque to the District Treasury Controller Office for the allowance distribution, the cheque has been stuck midway because of the restructuring of local-level under the new federal setups. RSS