Coronavirus crisis has hit some worse than others, especially those with fewer means. One such person is 60-year-old Bifan Bhuyan who carried his 105-year-old mother on his back to collecy pension from the bank.
The incident reportedly took place in Ranka town in Garhwa district, Jharkhand. Bhuyan had to carry his old mother to withdraw her pension money from Jan Dhan account, but was reportedly turned away as she did not have a COVID-19 test report.
Facebook/Siddharth Ramu
A COVID-19 test camp had been set up by block administration outside Vananchal Gramin Bank in Ranka. Those who tested negative for COVID-19 were reportedly allowed to enter the bank.
To withdraw three months’ pension amounting to Rs 1,500–collected under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana and deposited in his mother’s Jan Dhan bank–Mr Bhuyan, a daily wage labourer, visited the bank. Since he had no other means, he carried his 105-year-old mother Yatavaria Kunwar on his back and walked a distance of four kilometres from the Kanchanpur village to Ranka.
After the images of the incident started doing rounds on social media, Chief Minister Hemant Soren took notice and directed the Deputy Commissioner of Garhwa to assist the 105-year-old woman.
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PTI
The branch manager of VG Bank then reached Mr Bhuyan’s house with the pension amount and reportedly assured them that the old lady need not visit the bank again and that money could be withdrawn from nearest service point.
Sometime ago, video of a 60-year-old Odisha woman seen dragging her 100-year-old mother to the bank for ‘physical verification’ in order to retrieve pension money went viral. The video was from Nuapada district, some 433 kilometres from Bhubaneswar.
The bank had allegedly refused to release pension to the woman without the physical verification of the 100-year-old beneficiary. So the daughter, herself a senior citizen, was forced to drag her mother on a cot during peak summer.
BJP’s Nuapada legislator Raju Dholakia reportedly said he had asked the state’s Naveen Patnaik government to look into it.
“We came to know about the incident through the video in which a woman was seen being dragged on a cot. She was taken to the bank for withdrawal of her pension money. I request the government to look into the matter and take strict action,” Nuapada MLA Mr Dholakia reportedly said. However his response was criticized and he was accused of passing the buck rather than taking a lead.
Few days after the video emerged of the woman going to withdraw her mother’s money under Jan Dhan Yojana, the Utkal Grameen Bank suspended the bank’s manager.
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