Covid relief reaching victims' families rapidly after CM Kejriwal’s ‘perform or perish’ direction to officials

New Delhi: After strict measures were taken by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal last week regarding the pendency in implementation of 'Mukhyamantri COVID-19 Parivaar Arthik Sahayata Yojana', the families of most of the people who lost their lives from Corona have received financial help.

Following the reprimand of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the officials worked on a war footing to complete the task. Out of the verified applications so far, 89 per cent of the victims' families have received an ex-gratia of Rs 50,000. The remaining set of victims' families will also get this amount by Wednesday.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had again held a high level review meeting of the scheme today. He commended the officers for working round the clock to help the bereaved families. During this meeting, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also directed the officials to complete the disbursal of the monthly pension of all the beneficiaries within a week.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal gave strict instructions that all those who have not yet registered for the pension, be made to register no matter what it takes for the officials to reach out to them and the pension of all the victims' families should be started within a week. The officials informed Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal that the monthly pension of 86 per cent of the applicants registered so far has been started.

In this meeting, along with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, dignitaries including Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, Cabinet Ministers Kailash Gahlot and Rajendra Pal Gautam were present along with the Chief Secretary and DMs of Delhi.

It is noteworthy that on October 1, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had expressed strong displeasure over the pendency in implementation of the Mukhyamantri COVID-19 Parivar Aarthik Sahayata Yojana in the high-level review meeting over the scheme. Back then he directed the officers to disburse the amount to the families of COVID-19 victims at the earliest. The CM had ordered that there will no longer be a need for Death Certificates and Surviving Member Certificates from families. He had said that the officials should instead verify applications from the MHA list or official records and immediately disburse money.

The CM had then stressed upon the fact that the government’s duty is to console and support grieving families and not create problems for them. The CM had further stated back then that there should be no delay in disbursal of the amount over frivolous reasons. He had directed the officials to not pile up paperwork and expedite the process of clearing applications urgently.
In this prospect, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal held a high level review meeting on the scheme again at the Delhi Secretariat today.

In the meeting, the officials presented the progress report of the scheme for the last one week in front of CM Arvind Kejriwal and said that out of the applications received for one-time assistance, 14,605 applications have been verified online and by visiting homes. Out of these verified applications, a one-time assistance amount of Rs 50 thousand has been transferred to the bank account of 13,005 people. Officials said that there are 2,196 families which have voluntarily backed out of the scheme.

At the same time, the officials said that the work of providing a monthly pension to the victims is going on rapidly. So far, out of the number of applications registered for the monthly pension, 86 percent people have started getting pension after verification. During the meeting, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal gave firm instructions to the officials to increase the registration for the monthly pension. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that all those who have not yet registered for the monthly pension should be contacted and registered at the earliest. He said that the pension should be disbursed to everyone by next week.