New Delhi, Jun 20 (PTI) The Centre on Monday started a two-day programme in Rajasthan's Udaipur to inform central government pensioners about various rules and procedures of disbursement of pension.

It will also update the field functionaries about the changes that take place from time to time through various amendments in the policy and procedures.

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"The Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW), under the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, has started a series of awareness programme for central pension processing centres and field functionaries handling pension related work in the bank," an official statement said.

Since the major pension disbursing authorities are banks, the first such programme in the series is being held for officers of State Bank of India (SBI) on June 20 and 21 June at Udaipur, covering the northern region of country, said the statement issued by the Personnel Ministry.

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Bankers's awareness programme was inaugurated on Monday by V Srinivas, Secretary, DoPPW.

"The objective of these programmes is to spread awareness of the various rules and procedures regarding disbursement of pension to central government pensioners as well as to update the field functionaries about the changes that take place from time to time through various amendments in the policy and procedures," the statement said.

The purpose of the programme is also to understand issues faced by bank officials in handling these processes and pensioners' grievances, it said.

There have been a number of amendments in the pension rules and several clarificatory orders and instructions have been issued during the last 50 years and these have been compiled and brought out as Central Civil Service (Pension) Rules, 2021 in December, 2021, according to the statement.

Secretary, V Srinivas stressed on providing seamless experience to pensioners through creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) enabled integrated pensioners portal, linkage of Department of Pension & Pensioners Welfare portal Bhavishya and SBI portals, creation of chat bot to ensure seamless interaction between pensioners, government and banker.

"The department in collaboration with SBI may set up a technology team for creating the above digital systems as the first deliverables after this program," the statement said.

Utmost attention is to be given on process and people related grievances by SBI, it said.

Four such awareness programmes will be conducted in collaboration with SBI to cover the whole country.

On similar lines, awareness programs will be conducted in collaboration with other pension disbursing banks in 2022-23, the statement added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)