Meghalaya CM launches pensioner’s life certificate mobile App

Shillong: Meghalaya Chief Minister, Conrad K Sangma on Thursday launched the mobile App on pensioner’s life certificates using face recognition intending to facilitate the elderly pensioners receive the service from the convenience of their homes without having to venture out during the pandemic.
The App can be downloaded from the Google Play store using the link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.plc.meg and very shortly it will be available in the Apple apps store for iOS users.
Life Certificate Verification is a process in which the Pensioners (Service/Family) of the State Government have to appear in front of the Treasury Officer or Pension Disbursing Authority to prove that they are still alive to receive the pension. The pensioner can do this either by paper-based Life Certificate, physical appearance, biometric fingerprint verification system using Kiosk or Jeevan Pramaan.
However, to avail of most of these services, the pensioner has to visit the Treasury Office. This posed a hindrance and inconvenience to pensioners due to old age, sickness and taking the travel to Treasury Offices. The current pandemic situation has further added to the difficulties of a pensioner for live verification.
To overcome these difficulties and to make services easier for a pensioner, NIC in collaboration with the Finance Department, Government of Meghalaya has developed a Mobile App called ‘The Pensioner’s Life Certificate Verification’ which offers pensioners a secure, easy and hassle-free interface for verifying their liveness to the Pension Disbursing Authorities from the comfort of their homes, using smartphones.
“The App uses ‘Deep Learning’ artificial intelligence technology whereby it can detect the liveliness of a pensioner from real-time photographs of living pensioners and the pensioner’s identity will then be verified with the help of Face Verification Technology. All the photographs captured are stored in a local server, not outside the State or the country,” an official statement said.
“The app has come where and when it is needed the most because the pensioners are elderly people who have difficulties in travelling for services, especially in these times of COVID when they are going out should be minimized,” Chief Minister Sangma underscored.
Chief Secretary, M S Rao said that Meghalaya is one of the pioneering states to develop and use technology for the convenience of the pensioners.
He also informed that the data of the pensioners are not shared with any foreign-based server and pensioners can verify their liveness from the convenience of their homes.