Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (SP)

Mangalore, Sep 30: Media persons from the city found out to their chagrin, that an organization, which had organized a press meet in the city on Wednesday September 29, was fictitious.

A press conference had been organized on Wednesday by K P Poojary, Dakshina Kannada and Udupi district unit president of the Federation of Senior Citzens Forum of Karnataka. He said his organization has been in existence since the last two years, and that it was registered a month back. When the media men started questioning him, he failed to recollect even the name of the president of the state level federation, which had permitted opening of district level units.

“I have no knowledge. A person named Parashuram used to be the president in the past, but he is dead,” was the only information he had. He also was unable to mention names of any of the office-bearers of the federation. Other than the fact that the federation issues identity cards to senior citizens by collecting Rs 65 from them, no other details came out of persistent queries.

In the press note, names of two men and 13 women were mentioned as office-bearers of the federation. Poojary said the federation was registered on August 20 this year, and that secretaries have been deputed for conducting house to house visits in the twin-districts to identify and issue identity cards to senior citizens. Secretary, Vidya Prashant Nair, personal secretary, Bharati Karkala, assistant secretaries, Yashwanti Rajesh and Uma P Karkala, were present at the press conference.

When officials of the district handicapped and senior citizens welfare department were contacted, they said the work of issuing identity cards to senior citizens had been entrusted to certain identified NGOs in all the taluks, and that such identity cards bear the signatures of authorised officials of the department. As per the information provided by them, the organizations to which this work has been entrusted in different  taluks are, Mangalore Senior Citizens Association (Mangalore), Union of Stree Shakti Self-Help Groups (Bantwal), State Retired Employees Union (Beltangady), Parivartana Seva Trust (Puttur), and Vision Charitable Trust (Sullia).