Bhubaneswar: It took a tweet from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to evoke a response from the State Bank of India (SBI) to the news of an elderly woman struggling to reach a bank on foot to collect her pension in Odisha’s Jharigaon area.
As the video of her plight became viral, the Finance Minister directed SBI to provide help to the woman.
Can see the manager of the @TheOfficialSBI responding but yet wish @DFS_India and @TheOfficialSBI take cognisance of this and act humanely. Are they no bank Mitra? @FinMinIndia https://t.co/a9MdVizHim
— Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) April 20, 2023
Reacting to the incident, the State Bank of India (SBI) manager of the Jharigaon branch said:
“Madam, we are equally pained to see this video. Smt Surya Harijan in the video used to withdraw her old age pension from the CSP point situated in her village every month. Due to old age, her fingerprints were not matching at the CSP point. She visited our Jharigaon Branch with her relative. Our Branch Manager immediately paid the amount by manually debiting her account. Our Branch Manager has also communicated that her pension will be delivered to her doorstep from next month. We have also decided to handover a wheelchair to Smt Surya Harijan.”
“Her fingers are broken, so she is facing trouble withdrawing money. She has been given ₹ 3,000 manually from the bank. We will resolve the problem soon,” the SBI manager of the Jharigaon branch said.
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Madam, we are equally pained to see this video. Smt Surya Harijan in the video used to withdraw her old age pension from the CSP point situated in her village every month. Due to old age, her finger prints were not matching at the CSP point.— State Bank of India (@TheOfficialSBI) April 20, 2023
Surya Harijan had walked several kilometres barefoot with the support of a broken chair to reach the Jharigaon Branch of the State Bank of India (SBI) to receive her pension. Her older son is working as a migrant labourer in a different state. She lives with her younger son’s family and he makes his living grazing other people’s cattle. The family has no land to plough and lives in a hut, the ANI reported.
