China News Service, Shijiazhuang, September 14 (Wang Xiafei) took a picture of his ID card and social security card and sent it to the community staff through WeChat. Liu Xuezang, an 81-year-old man in Xinji, Hebei Province, received the old-age allowance into his social security card on a monthly basis without leaving home. As the first city in Hebei Province to implement the "enjoy without application" policy for the elderly allowance, as of August this year, Xinji City has benefited from this policy to 21,000 people, and the coverage rate of the allowance for those over 80 years old has reached 100%.
Since 2015, Xinji City has implemented an old-age allowance system, with each person aged 80 to 89 receiving 50 yuan per month, each person aged 90 to 99 receiving 100 yuan per month, and each person aged 100 and above receiving 600 yuan per month. According to the regulations of the previous system, the elderly need to bring their ID cards, household registers and other materials to the village (community) to submit application materials and check their identity, which brings difficulties to some elderly people who are sick, disabled and have limited mobility.
In August 2024, Xinji City took the lead in Hebei Province to implement the "enjoy without application" policy for the elderly allowance. According to the issued list, village (community) staff proactively contacted the elderly and their families by phone or door-to-door visits to explain in detail the "enjoy without application" policy for the elderly allowance. The elderly can enjoy benefits in a timely and accurate manner without meeting in person.
"The community staff took the initiative to contact me and assisted with all the procedures, and the subsidies were directly paid to the social security card." Liu Xuezang said that now, he often introduces this policy to the elderly around him.
According to Tian Yanyang, a staff member of the Xinji Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau's Office for Aging, the city adheres to the principle of "two-way restraint, no need to apply and enjoy", and has established a data exchange and information sharing mechanism between household registration, social security, health and other departments. It regularly carries out comparison and sharing of household registration population and deceased persons' data and information. It compiles and summarizes the information of the elderly one month in advance to form a disbursement ledger. Subsidies are distributed monthly through social security cards.
Tian Boyang said that from January to August this year, Xinji City received 2,913 new elderly people who benefited from the old-age allowance "no need to apply for it" policy. At the same time, this policy reduces the number of form-filling, auditing, and review procedures required by cadres at the township and village levels by more than 20,000 times each year, effectively improving the efficiency of grassroots business processing.
It is reported that Hebei has currently implemented the "enjoy without application" policy for senior-age allowances in Xinji City, Handan City, Xingtai City and other places, and the next step will be to fully implement it throughout the province.
