Red tape straddles birth & death

Sixty-five-year-old Jayarani is a domestic worker who ekes out a hand-to-mouth existence.

Her only ray of hope is her dead husband’s pension, to which she is entitled. But what is preventing the pension from reaching her? Her inability to produce her husband’s death certificate.

Though two years have elapsed since her husband, ex-serviceman Paul Raj, died of a rare disease in Ulsoor, Jayarani is unable to lay her hands on the death certificate that has to be issued by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).

Virtually on the streets, Jayarani had to migrate to Chennai in search of work. But she is back in Bangalore once or twice every week to run from pillar to post in pursuit of the death certificate.

On Tuesday, Jayarani was at BBMP’s Citizens Service Centre in Public Utility Building on MG Road. She broke down when deputy mayor N Dayanand, who had paid a surprise visit to the centre, spoke to her when she was standing in a serpentine queue and asked her why she was in the office.

Jayarani told the deputy mayor how she was being made to run from pillar to post for her husband’s death certificate. “I was made to cough up Rs100 as bribe in BBMP’s Ulsoor office on the promise that I will get the death certificate.

But it never came. I went to Chennai to work as a maid servant. For three days now, I have been coming to the centre and there is still no result,” Jayarani told the deputy mayor, struggling to keep herself from breaking down.

She said every time she went to the centre on the ground floor, she would be asked to go to the death certificate issuing official on the 10th floor from where she would  be sent right back to the ground floor.

On Tuesday, she poured her griefs out to the deputy mayor, who later issued a  stern directive to BBMP officials to ensure that the woman’s work was done with no further delay.