The plight of pensioners

In Pakistan, especially in Karachi, pensioners have to pass through a number of hurdles to obtain a pension, just to get something to which they are legally entitled. The government has turned a blind eye to the misery elderly people go through in the process of getting the meagre amounts comprising their pensions.



Ms Nadra Rizvi is a widow whom I personally know. She lives in Gulshan-e-Iqbal and is a retired administrator of a school. She is over 60 and lives alone in an apartment. The pension she gets is her only hope for survival. Each month, she collects her pension from the designated branch of a bank situated in the University of Karachi and complains of the harsh attitudes of the officers deputed there. She told me that when the time to collect the pension amount nears, it causes her mental agony and she is overcome by the fear of passing through the same ill-treatment over and over again, which is no less than a nightmare for her. Others also suffer the same treatment.



Each month when she goes to the bank for her pension, she has to face the rudeness and lame excuses of the employees there. Either the bank’s server is not working or one of its authorised official, responsible for handling pension matters, has gone on leave without assigning the task to his subordinate or a colleague.

Such an attitude creates delays and hardships for those pensioners who can’t afford to pay exorbitant fares of public transport for commuting only for the said purpose. Most of the time, they have to wait in long queues in the scorching sun to get their payment. There are hardly any measures taken to provide any kind of facility to the poor pensioners. In most cases, these people travel from far-flung areas of the metropolis to get the due amount. Most of them are so old they can’t even walk properly and often suffer from illnesses, which have already made their lives a living hell.

I personally went to a branch of the said bank near the Federal Urdu University and witnessed the sorrowful state of the pensioners who were criticising the apathy of the government for the problems being faced by them.



In the developed world, access to such facilities is becoming increasingly convenient. But in our country, this still seems to be a distant dream. The government should devise a strategy or a system to facilitate pensioners at their doorsteps. A lot has been said and published in the past on this issue. It is now time for the government to act.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2015.