Poor Banking Services: A challenge to Govt welfare initiatives
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: December 16, 2014 -
Transfer of subsidies through bank accounts is a laudable step to ensure transparency and reduce bribery in government offices.
However, it is a challenge to people who do not get adequate banking facilities at their place of residence.
Transfer of wages for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme, Old Age Pensions, LPG Subsidies etc through the bank accounts of beneficiaries is a nice scheme, the success of which depends on adequate banking services and its awareness by the people.
If implemented effectively, it will certainly trim down the room for corruption by officials, staff of related government departments and local leaders.
However, the reality is dark when it comes to implementation stage. Manipur has a remarkably poor banking facility which is quite unable to cater to the needy beneficiaries.
Moreover, majority of people here lack banking awareness. Hence, without adequate banking facilities, all such schemes will be a headache to the government as well as to the citizens.
Sometime back, the state cabinet passed resolutions to provide old age pensions to beneficiaries in cash, instead of the earlier directives to do the same through bank accounts.
The development came, when the government realized that poor and illiterate beneficiaries are quite far away from the modern banking jargons.
Similarly, now the LPG subsidy programme will be a challenge to the consumers as well as LPG distributors.
Most consumers do not have bank accounts, and opening of a bank account for the purpose is also an uphill task to many.
In the meantime, LPG consumer-bank account linkage has a deadline of December 31 this year.
When the deadline in over, those who do not have linkage to banks will miss the subsidy and they have to buy LPG cylinders at higher rates.
Out of estimated 2.5 lakh consumers, even 30 percent would not be able to finalize the process of linkage with banks.
Then we may well assess the huge amount of money to be incurred by majority of consumers in purchasing non-subsidized LPG cylinders.
Hence, the scheme of Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG subsidy through consumers’ bank accounts, in spite of its benefits, will be a huge loss for Manipur state.
Banking facilities and awareness on it should precede all flagship schemes which call for people’s welfare in this modern age.
* Comments posted by users in this discussion thread and other parts of this site are opinions of the individuals posting them (whose user ID is displayed alongside) and not the views of e-pao.net. We strongly recommend that users exercise responsibility, sensitivity and caution over language while writing your opinions which will be seen and read by other users. Please read a complete Guideline on using comments on this website.