TEAM HERALD

teamherald@herald-goa.com

PANJIM: Two months after the expose, the State government has decided to recover the amount illegally procured by 14 government servants under the Dayanand Social Security (DSS) Scheme with eight percent interest. 

The Department of Social Welfare will shortly issue notices to the ineligible beneficiaries asking them to repay the amount with interest levied by the government. 

Herald was the first to report on the DSS beneficiary scam, wherein South Goa alone had 14 such government servants reaping benefits of the scheme meant for senior citizens, widows, women abandoned by husbands and differently-abled people.

The guilty officials in their show cause replies expressed innocence and “promised” to pay back the amount they picketed from the scheme. 

“One of them has already issued a cheque repaying the total amount. He will be asked to pay the interest amount as well,” informed an officer.  

The scheme, which was conceived during Manohar Parrikar’s earlier tenure, was rigged by these fake beneficiaries. 

An inquiry conducted by the Planning and Statistics Department a year ago had also detected that the annual income of 919 beneficiaries was more than Rs 20,000 per annum as against Rs 12,000 per annum slab prescribed under the scheme.

Similarly, 1907 beneficiaries were migrants and 491 retired servicemen having annual income more than the prescribed limit.

Faced with the bogus or duplicate cases, the department has now decided to conduct water tight survey to find the illegal beneficiaries exhausting funds allotted to the scheme.

The State budget had scaled up the remuneration under this scheme from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2000 from April onwards.