Activists seek docu relief for pension & insurance claims

Pune: Health activists and medical experts have urged the state government to consider documents like hospital’s medical cause of death and cremation pass for processing pension or insurance claims, instead of mandatorily seek the death certificates issued by the municipal corporation.

The appeal was made considering huge pendency at the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) as far as issuance of death certificates is concerned. The PMC’s birth and death registration department issues death certificates based on medical cause of death and cremation pass. Both of these documents are issued immediately.

“We are trying our best to dispense as many birth and death certificates as possible every day. But staff crunch and the pendency since the initial period of lockdown have added to our woes. We have backlog of registering 3,000 deaths (Covid as well as non-Covid) and about 4,500 births since August ,” Kalpana Baliwant, head of the PMC’s birth and death registration office, said.

The main office of PMC’s birth and death registration is located in Kasba Peth. It collates daily death/birth data and uploads related data/documents on the central portal. The officials concerned then verify the data and grant approval online. The data then gets distributed to the 15 ward offices as per the citizen’s residential addresses. A citizen can then get the required birth and death certificate from the respective ward office’s citizen facilitation centre (CFCs).

“Currently, there is a huge staff crunch even at the ward level CFCs. Hence, citizens from all the 15 ward offices gather at the main office with complete disregard for social distancing norms. A few of our staff have fallen ill and are on leave,” Baliwant said. Therefore, Baliwant said, the state government could start accepting to process pension and insurance-related claims to ease people’s burden.

Health activist and medical practitioner Abhijit More said, “Pendency of 3,000 death certificates alone in the PMC limits is huge. I am sure the situation is almost the same in other affected cities of Maharashtra. The state government should take immediate steps to ease the clause of submitting the death certificate for processing claims.”

Source: The Times of India

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