Guwahati, July 29: Assam Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma inaugurated the Pension Seva Kendra (PSK) of Kamrup (Metro) District set up by AMTRON at the office of the District Elementary Education Officer for streamlining the procedures to ease the hardship faced by pensioners at here today.

The Assam government approved to set up Pension Seva Kendras by AMTRON in the districts across the State on October 28 in line with its commitment to improve the ease of living for citizens. Accordingly, AMTRON has set up PSKs in 27 districts to facilitate scanning and uploading of service books along with submission of pension proposals through the online Kritagyata Portal.

The state government in a bid to streamline the pension procedures decided to set up the PSKs to benefit the pensioners who dedicate a long period of their life to the service of the people. As the school teachers constitute the maximum numbers of pensioners in the state, a  decision was taken to open the PSKs at the office of the district offices of the education department. However, it will also cater to the services of the pensioners of other departments as well.

Highlighting the operation of the PSKs, the chief minister said that the state government has authorized all district authorities, head of offices (HODs) and competent authorities to start the processing of pension proposals within one year of retirement of an employee. The scanning and uploading of service books will be done by the PSK operators and they will forward the service books and record to the HODs functioning as the custodian of service books through the Kritagyata Portal. 

The HODs after proper compilation of the scanned service books and records will forward it to the sanctioning authority i.e. Director of Pension and Accountant General to sanction the pension.

The PSKs will facilitate retirees to submit forms online in Kritagyata on getting SMS from head of offices. It will also help retirees to upload digital life certificate through Jeevan Pramaan using registered device of Jeevan Pramaan besides acting as cyber cafe to help pensioners to download their Pension Payment Order (PPO) and other information.

The Kritagyata portal will be connected to head of offices and CM’s dashboard. The chief minister informed that efforts were on to increase the number of PSKs from 27 to 35 to cover all districts of the state.