Relaxation of Rule 80-A for payment of provisional Family Pension on death of a Government Servant

 

To

The Secretary General

Confederation of Central Government employees and Workers

New Delhi.

Sub: Relaxation of Rule 80-A for payment of provisional Family Pension on death of a Government Servant during service due to the delay in finalization of family pension and gratuity results in hardship to the family of the deceased Government servant.

Comrade ,

                 With reference to the Relaxation of Rule 80-A for payment of provisional Family Pension on death of a Government Servant during service  the Central Government had issued  OFFICE MEMORANDUM Dated 29th July, 2020 issued vide No. 1/11/2020-P&PW (E) Government of India Ministry of Personnel, P.G. & Pensions Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare. In respect of payment of provisional Family Pension on death of a Government Servant during service

                The Central Government had issued this order to curtail the hardship to family members in respect of provisional family pension and death gratuity in favour of claimant or claimants. But this order falls short of aspirations of the family members the hardships faced by the family members especially during covid times are not resolved by the above office memorandum dated 29^th July 2020 and needs immediate attention to improve this OM. 

The highlights of the order is as follows:

 

1)     The Head of Office shall not wait for forwarding of the family pension case (including Form-14, Form-18 and other relevant documents mentioned in Rule 80) to Pay & Accounts Office before sanctioning the provisional family pension.

 

2)      In order to avoid any hardship to the family of the deceased Government servant, it has been decided to relax the provisions of rule 80-A of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972 to the extent that if a claim for family pension in Form 14 along with death certificate and bank account details of the claimant has been received and the Head of Office is satisfied about the bonafide of that claim, he shall sanction provisional family pension immediately

 

3)     The Pay & Accounts Office shall release the provisional family pension on the basis of sanction order issued by the Head of Office without insisting for any other documents including service book.

 

4)     The payment of provisional family pension sanctioned as may initially continue for a period of six months from the date, following the date of death of employee. The period of such provisional family pension sanctioned may be further extended, for not more than six months at a time, on the advice of Pay & Accounts Office and with the approval of Head of Department (HOD).

 

The practical problems the family of the deceased Government faces are follows :

1)     The pension papers should be submitted to the head of the office only after issue of death certificate by the local Government agencies such as Municipal corporations, Village level Panchayats  etc .     Due to lockdown and covid situation considerably time is taken to get the certified death certificate form local government agencies at present it takes about two to three months’ time itself . After getting the death certificate they take time to fill the papers online system portal and processing it by office and PAO.

 

2)     Many of the  Pay & Accounts Offices is always not located in the  same city sometimes there are located thousands of  kilometres away due to covid and lockdown the transportation of papers are difficult and time consuming  for example a family pension case is processed in Bangalore and sent to New Delhi PAO office then it takes about 10 days’ time to, reach this office and then case to process in PAO then takes another 10 to 15 days so there shall be an month delay for provisional family pension to be issued .

 

In view of the above the above order shall be modified as below :

 

1)     The death certificate issued from doctor and cremation certificate   should be sufficient for issuing of the provisional family pension .

 

2)     The head of the office shall issue the and pay the family pension without obtaining permission from the  Pay & Accounts Offices, they can only intimate the Pay & Accounts Offices only.

  

3)     The provisional family pension shall be issued for at least one year instead of six months or till the pension case is settled .                  

I kindly request to take up the above issues with the Central Government on priority basis .

                                                                       Comradely yours

 

                                                                      (P.S.Prasad)  

                                                                    Working President

 

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