KATHMANDU, March 30: The government is all set to raise the amount for allowance of senior citizens from the next fiscal year starting from July 16.
Speaking at a program organized by Reporters Club Nepal on Tuesday, Prime Minister KP Oli, said the government will be revising the social security allowance through the upcoming budget. Earlier, the CPN-UML through the election manifesto had pledged to increase the old age allowance to Rs 5,000 per person per month in five years of its tenure.
Spend, spend and spend!
At present, senior citizens above 65 years are entitled to receive Rs 3,000 in monthly social security allowance. Through the budget for 2019/20, the government had revised the allowance amount from previous Rs 2,000 a month.
The senior citizen allowance scheme was for the first time introduced by former finance minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari in 1994-95 starting with Rs 100 for people aged over 75. The allowance sum remained the same for eight years. It was during Adhikari’s second tenure as a finance minister in 2004-05 when the allowance was raised to Rs 175.
The allowance sum was later increased to Rs 500 during Baburam Bhattarai’s tenure as a finance minister in 2008. The sum was doubled to Rs 1,000 by the Nepali Congress (NC)-led government in 2014 when Ram Sharan Mahat was the finance minister.
In 2015, the then finance minister Bishnu Paudel of the erstwhile CPN-UML government again doubled the senior citizen allowance to Rs 2,000.
