Central Government notifies the rules for Senior Citizen Welfare Fund utilising unclaimed PPF, EPF and other Govt sponsored Small Savings funds
The Ministry of Finance released the rules for creation of Senior Citizens Welfare Fund, which will have funds from unclaimed deposits in small savings schemes including Post Office Savings Accounts, Public Provident Fund and Employees’ Provident Fund within one year.
The ministry released the notification dated March 18 about the fund, which will be utilised for schemes for the promotion of the welfare of senior citizens in line with the National Policy on Older Persons and the National Policy on Senior Citizens.
The ministry stated the Fund shall be an interest bearing account, administered by a Committee consisting of nine members. The committee will be headed by secretary in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment who shall be the ex-officio chairperson along with officials from Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Labour and Employment among others.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech last year had proposed the creation of Senior Citizens Welfare Fund saying, “there are unclaimed deposits of about Rs 3,000 crore in the PPF, and approximately Rs 6,000 crore in the EPF corpus. I have proposed the creation of a Senior Citizen Welfare Fund, in the Finance Bill, for appropriation of these amounts to a corpus which will be used to subsidize the premiums of vulnerable groups such as old age pensioners, BPL card-holders, small and marginal farmers and others.”
Every institution which has the unclaimed deposits in their small savings accounts shall prepare list of unclaimed deposits in the accounts and notify to the public. “The Institution shall identify the unclaimed amounts on annual basis and make transfers to the Fund on or before the 1st day of March, each year. The transfers by the Institutions shall be made on a net basis, namely, the unclaimed deposits minus the claims accepted in accordance with the law for the time being in force, of the accounts whose balances have already been transferred to the Fund,” the notification said.
The nodal Ministry for the Fund shall be the Ministry of Social Justice. The rate of interest for the money lying in the Fund shall be determined and notified by the Ministry of Finance on an annual basis, the notification said.
Source : Indian Express
COMMENTS
Lots of unclaimed FDs etc are with all banking Institutions,both public and private,which are not their property.these funds too be utilized for the welfare of the deserving common citizens.
Apart, if only the Central Govt fixes time frame for the payments rightfully due and payable to especially to super citizens,such as arrears of pension etc,that itself will be a great welfare rendered ,while they are treated as beggars by the departments,who do not settle for months together even though it could a straight case.For all such dues a policy be laid that cases of super citizens there too based on date of birth be made the criteria to issue revised PPO / and further payments by banks,so that the case worker cannot deal at his fancy ,for any reason/s ,which is now happening Fixing the time frame in all such matters by the Govt will be the greatest welfare to the Sr,especially to the Super Sr Citizens,who resides in a different State while his Accounts Authority ,who issues such orders ,is in another state. And this frail and poor healthy super citizen cannot personally go to such an office with a begging bowl , even if situated in the same place let alone in different state.
I beg and appeal to the Authorities to give a serious thought and solve such easily solvable ones by fixing alround time frame.
I hope this will not go a wild cry in the forest.