Covid-19 in Tamil Nadu: Pensioners get time till Sept to submit life certificates

Mar 27, 2020, 03.28 PM IST

CHENNAI: In the backdrop of Covid-19 spread and peak summer season, the Tamil Nadu government on Thursday modified its earlier order, directing the government pensioners and family pensioners to submit life certificates any time during in July, August and September for annual mustering instead of April, May and June to the pension disbursing officer concerned.

“If any pensioner including family pensioner fails to do so, the pension disbursing authority shall call for the personal appearance in October and pension/family pension will be stopped from November onwards for those pensioners including family pensioners, who neither appear directly for mustering nor furnish life certificate,” an order issued by the finance department said.

The move comes in the wake of requests from the Tamil Nadu Retired Officials’ Association (TNROA) and the commissioner of treasuries and accounts to change the time for mustering to avoid the spreading of coronavirus in the present scenario and also to avoid peak summer season.

It is mandatory for the state government pensioners, including family pensioners, to furnish life certificate, non-employment certificate and non-remarriage/non-marriage certificate to the government during April, May and June every year. If they don’t furnish on or before June 30, the pension disbursing officer will call for annual mustering of the pensioners/family pensioners during July.

If the pensioners neither produce the certificates nor appear for annual mustering, the pension officer will stop the payment of pension/family pension with effect from August and pension will resume only on submission of certificates or appearance in person before the officer concerned.

In a representation to the chief minister, Tamil government all department pensioners’ association president N L Sridharan said, “The state government has already imposed prohibitory orders. Since the virus infect easily the senior citizens, the annual mustering will have to be put off.”