2 weeks Ago By Steffy Thevar
Pune: The civic body has started manual verification of documents required for the registration of beneficiaries under the central govt's much-touted Prime Minister's Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY). The scheme has been under fire for repeated and prolonged technical glitches, resulting in delays in registration and disbursement of funds to beneficiaries eligible under the scheme. "We have started the physical verification of documents.
Earlier, the beneficiaries could register directly on the portal, but often, the site is slow, the OTP is not generated, or there are other issues. So, our Asha workers are registering the beneficiaries," said Dr Manisha Naik, assistant health officer of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and in charge of the scheme in the civic body. Owing to the technical issue present for the last eight months, the state health department hadundertaken a special drive to register the pending beneficiaries to clear the backlog since March 2023.
"The website has been reporting technical glitches for the past few months. The eligible beneficiaries have not received funds since March 2023. We conducted a special drive to clear the backlog and registered 50% of our target numbers," Dr Amod Gadikar, additional health commissioner in charge of Sanjeevani and PMJAY activities of the state's family welfare department, said.
"The approval of each beneficiary goes through multiple levels, block to district to state and then Centre. So, it takes some time," he said. Under the PMMVY, women from certain socio-economic sections of the society are eligible to gain monetary benefits, Rs6,000 during pregnancy and until the child turns one year old and is vaccinated.
The fundsare disbursed in three instalments. Many women, however, could not register for the scheme due to glitches in the website,which hampered the distributionof funds.The scheme was launched to ensure women get nutritious food during pregnancy, can nourish the unborn child and make up for the loss of wages during pregnancy and postpartum.
As per PMC, more than 88,000 women have taken benefit of the scheme since 2020..
