Seventy-six-year old Chakhulli BK from Dhum Village in Rara Municipality recently received her old-age allowance of Rs 19,000. That amount represented her cumulative monthly allowances for nine months. Her husband, Megya BK, also received the same amount. To get the government allowance, however, the couple had to wait for nine months, they said.

“The only source of money for us is the government allowance. It helps us buy nutritious food, medicine, essentials and clothes,” BK said. “Our children do not look after us.”

Sher Singh Kami, a disabled person, too depends on government allowance to get by. “The first thing I’ll do with the allowance is pay back the loans I had taken in the last nine months and buy kitchen essentials,” Kami said.

But waiting for succour can prove trying. Even though the norm is to provide the allowance every four months, the government didn’t disburse the funds on time this year; and this delay has affected many elderly people, single women and disabled across the district.

This year’s delay resulted from issues plaguing the government’s social security scheme, said Mayor Hari Jung Shahi. “The distribution of the allowance has also been hindered by the lack of budget, as the municipality office has been allocated only Rs 1.5 millions of the necessary Rs 3 million,” said Shahi. "About 90 percent of the total allowance has been distributed to people in wards from 1 through 14 so far.”

According to Shahi, the government had plans to start sending the allowances directly to the receivers’ bank account, but they could not do so because the data, previously handwritten, had not been digitised yet.

Therefore, the municipality went door-to-door distributing the allowance.

The government allocates a monthly allowance of Rs 400 to children below five years, Rs 1, 000 to single women and people between 60 to 70 years, and Rs 2,000 to people over the age of 70 and to the completely disabled

Rara Municipality has 1,542 senior citizens, 346 single women, 64 completely disabled, 77 partially disabled and 4,398 children below the age of five.

Photo caption:

Mayor Hari Jung Shahi distributes monthly allowance to senior citizens in Bhambada village in Rara Municipality. 

***

What do you think?

Dear reader, we’d like to hear from you. We regularly publish letters to the editor on contemporary issues or direct responses to something the Post has recently published. Please send your letters to [email protected] with "Letter to the Editor" in the subject line. Please include your name, location, and a contact address so one of our editors can reach out to you.