Karachi: For over four years the Sindh government has been successfully implementing a hassle-free procedure to dispense claims of its universal accidental insurance scheme to benefit heirs of every deceased adult citizen whose death occurs in an accident.
Sindh is the only province of Pakistan where every accidental death of its adult citizen is insured with insurance claims paid in just 20 days after applying.
This is in sharp contrast to other government compensation schemes whose dispensation often get unusually delayed due to age-old lengthy bureaucratic procedures. Such schemes are also often marred with allegations of corruption and other financial irregularities. The Benazir Income Support Programme is one such example.
Insurance claim
The heirs of every deceased adult citizen of Sindh-having age 18 and above-whose death occurs in an accident-are eligible to get Rs 100,000 as the accidental insurance claim.
The Sindh Insurance - a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sindh government - has been successfully dispensing the scheme since October, 2016.
The Sindh government fully bears the expenses of this universal accidental insurance scheme. The insurance scheme is of universal nature as it benefits every bona fide adult citizen of Sindh irrespective of his or her class, gender, race, and religion.
“Applications to get the insurance claim are received at all the branches of Sindh Bank that are located everywhere in the province. The application could also be obtained from the website of Sindh Insurance,” said Muhammad Faisal Siddiqui, CEO of Sindh Insurance.
He said that every application should accompany the computerised national identity card of the deceased, death certificate issued by the National Database & Registration Authority, and a report issued by the police or the hospital authority proving the accidental nature of the death.
Siddiqui said that insurance claims were paid through an easy procedure to the next of kin of the deceased as that is a spouse in the case of the accidental death of a married person and father in the case of an unmarried victim.
Once the application is submitted with the required documents, the claim money is directly paid to the bank account of the prospective beneficiary within 15 to 20 days.
“We have successfully paid thousands of the claims of the scheme since 2016,” said CEO of Sindh Insurance.
Special compensation
The claim money is paid even if the deceased’s death occurred due to any major tragedy for which the government announces any special compensation.
He said that they duly investigated the cases where there was any suspicion about the claim of accidental death.
He said that number of fraudulent claims to get benefit from the scheme had been negligible since its launch.
“An external auditor duly audits this scheme as so far it has not raised the objection against any insurance claim paid by us,” said Siddiqui.
Apart from this scheme, this Sindh Insurance also insure assets and development projects of Sindh government including its offices and motor vehicles.
