According to the report, the MoU will onboard more than 7900 branches of Bank of Baroda and 6300 branches of HDFC Bank as Service Centres to provide last mile connectivity to pensioners.
New Delhi: In order to onboard Bank of Baroda and HDFC Bank as service centres under the System for Pension Administration (Raksha) (SPARSH) initiative, Ministry of Defence on Wednesday signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with them.
Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar said that the objective is to bring 17 Lakh pensioners out of the total 32 lakh defence pensioners on SPARSH by the end of this month and the remaining pensioners will be brought to SPARSH at the earliest. He said that the average time in pension settlement has come down significantly to about 16 days.
According to the report, the MoU will onboard more than 7900 branches of Bank of Baroda and 6300 branches of HDFC Bank as Service Centres to provide last mile connectivity to pensioners, especially those who live in remote areas of the country and those who do not have the means or technical wherewithal to logon to SPARSH. For these pensioners, the Service Centers will become an interface for SPARSH and provide an effective medium for pensioners to perform profile update requests, register grievances and seek redressal, digital annual identification, pensioner data verification or also simply fetch detailed information regarding their monthly pension.
These centres would further augment the existing network of more than 161 DAD offices and nearly 800 service centres provided by State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank branches, and 14 branches of the Kotak Mahindra Bank. More than 4.5 lakh Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) will also assist Defence Pensioners, as part of the Common Service Centres (CSC) network. The access to these service centers would be provided free of cost to the pensioners, with nominal service charges being borne by the Defence Account Department.