Coalition govt weeding out pensions indiscriminately

Tadepalli, Aug 23: YSRCP has demanded to restore the deleted pensions of disabled persons and said that the Party will take up the issue with district collectors state-wide with the affected persons to mount pressure on the coalition.

Speaking to media here on Saturday, former minister Merugu Nagarjuna said that the coalition has been indiscriminately deleting pensions of disabled persons with no concern towards social security while YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has shown compassion towards them and disbursed pensions on time.

The recent incident of Chall Ramaiah’s attempted suicide for deleting pension to disabled persons had ignited a statewide outrage and people with more than 40 per cent disability are weeded out in the name of re-verification.

We will protest at all district collector offices with the disabled persons on August 25 pressing to revoke the deletion and it is inhuman on part of the government to stop the pension to people with disability.

While the old people and physically challenged had to go the disbursing offices now, during YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government on the first of every month pension would come calling early in the morning to every house which shows the degree of concern, he said adding that five lakh pensions were removed and efforts are on to cut down further.

YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government has given pensions to 66 lakh persons and in the previous tenure of Chandrababu Naidu it was just 30 lakhs and now the coalition is working to weed out 5 lakh pensions which shows the difference, he said.

While there are only 52 SADARAM camps now during YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s term there were 171 camps and the process was simple and smooth. Now people with disability had to run from pillar to post get their certificates verified and are facing hardships and the government seems to be on a commitment to cut short the pensions to save money and it lacks accountability.