Reality of PMMVY 2.0: Dues pending for thousands of pregnant women in state

Thousands of pregnant women and new mothers across Maharashtra have not received their Rs 5000 entitlements under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana PMMVY for the past few months due to changes in the schemersquos guidelines and the website Very few new beneficiaries have been registered in the city and the state since March this year after the Central government decided to shut down the old portal for the schemeA statelevel health official involved in the implementation of the programme explained that the old website abruptly shut down in midMarch ldquoAll the beneficiary data was on the old website and it has become inaccessible since As a result there is no way to determine how many people have not received their moneyrdquo the official statedThe data migration to the new website which remained inaccessible to health workers for registering new beneficiaries until about September is still in progress ldquoThere is still very little clarity on when those registered under the old guidelines will now receive their pending benefitsrdquo the official expressedLast year Maharashtra had managed to register about four lakh women under the scheme of which about 35 lakh women had received the benefits after having a Direct Benefit Transferenabled bank account ldquoOnly about 90000 women have been registered so far this year under the new schemerdquo the officials said adding that many forms in the earlier scheme were rejected due to issues with their or their husbandrsquos AadhaarThe scheme was initially launched in 2017 with a provision for direct cash transfer to the bank or post office account of pregnant women and lactating mothers for their first living child The primary objective of PMMVY is to provide compensation for wage loss during pregnancy so that women can maintain adequate food intake and rest before and after the delivery of the childIn 2022 this scheme was revised and additional documents such as income proof often the familys ration card were added to the list It is now known as lsquoPMMVY 20rsquo The new scheme does not require the husbandrsquos Aadhaar anymore and it extends an additional entitlement of Rs 6000 to women whose second child is femaleldquoSo in September we were told by the Centre to start registering women with a second child born in and after April 2022 and ASHAs and health workers were put to the task Most of the 90000 registered this year are women with a second child and not the firstrdquo the state official explainedWith the new revised scheme came a new website but state officials were not informed in advance before the old website was shut down Many initially thought it was a technical glitch when the old website stopped working Around June the Central government issued a government resolution implementing the scheme with its new guidelines while in earlier announcements the government had stated that the scheme would be implemented from April 2022The state government followed suit and officials received their login credentials along with health workers from local municipal corporations by JuneJuly However there were some technical errors and the credentials were soon revokedldquoWe were able to access the website with our login credentials only by Septemberrdquo said a wardlevel health official with the BMC ldquoThe details were incomplete and they had asked for revised data of health officials and workersrdquo said another official with the state public health departmentEven now the process of registering new beneficiaries is slow as community health workers and ASHAs have just started receiving training However even at BMC health posts health workers have encountered cases where glitches on the website continue ldquoSome do not have their names on familyrsquos ration cards and others do not have Aadhaar linked to a DBTlinked bank accountrdquo said a health worker at a health post in M East wardMeanwhile a civic medical health officer in Central Mumbai is disappointed with how the revised scheme has panned out on the ground ldquoSince May we have been asking health workers to note down the contact details of the beneficiaries to register them once all these issues are sorted out But there will be a dropout rate as some of these women will be difficult to track againrdquo he remarkedOn October 27 a national event on the PMMVY was held by Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde at the Yashwantrao Chavan Centre in Mumbai This event highlighted the achievements of PMMVY the features of the new PMMVY portal and mobile app with slogans like Digital India Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat2022Year scheme was revised