One and a half years ago, 46-year-old Hariprasad had just stepped out for duty at the Thiruvananthapuram city police control room when he felt suffocated. It was a heart attack. The policeman died, leaving behind his wife Suvarna and two children, a college student and a schoolgirl. He also had a housing loan from the Kerala Police Housing Cooperative Society (KPHCS).
It fell upon Suvarna, who did not have a job, to pay several lakhs of rupees towards the loan. She made many requests but the bylaws of the society didn’t permit waiving the loan or cutting it down, she was told. Suvarna had lost all hope until in February 2020 a new team of police officials took charge of the society. She got a call one day when she least expected it, telling her the loan had been written off and she would get her documents back.
“I hadn’t given a fresh application to the new team of police officials at KPHCS. But they took it up themselves and called to let me know the loan has been written off, and that I would get back the property documents given as surety. I’m very grateful to them,” Suvarna tells TNM.
KPHCS began functioning in 1982 with the idea of providing housing loans to police officials who used to find it difficult to avail bank loans. “Police personnel just found it so hard to build a house of their own. For whatever reasons, banks were hesitant about giving loans to police officials back then. That’s how the society came into being. The loans would be paid off a year before the policeman retires. But the problem was, if a policeman died while in service the pending loan would fall upon the immediate family, who might find it difficult to pay it off,” says Jyothish RK, executive director at KPHCS.
Biju CR, the vice president of the society, took a few months to study the various benefits of insurance schemes to come up with a plan to write off such pending loans. It was soon after the new team of officials took charge last February that they came upon the story of Hariprasad who died while in service, and the requests made by Suvarna. They examined more such pending loans and found 36 cases where the police official who took the loan had died while in service. Many of these were above Rs 20 lakh.
Last Saturday, the KPHCS, in the presence of Minister Kadakampally Surendran, wrote off two pending loans – Rs 21.12 lakh availed by Jayakumar who was in city traffic police when he died, and Rs 11.33 lakh taken by Sajikumar, who died while serving with the Thiruvananthapuram Rural Police.
Speaking to TNM, Sajitha, Jayakumar’s wife, says, “He was 41 years old and died of an illness. I’m not employed and I had no idea what to do when I heard about the pending loan. Our house was built in Thiruvallam, but the loan was availed from the Ernakulam branch (Thiruvananthapuram branch started later). At first there was no reply to my request to consider our situation and waive the loan. Then I approached officials of the Kerala Police Association. They told me later that the loan has been written off and I cannot say how relieved I was to hear that. I’m very thankful to them.” The couple has two children, aged eight and two.
Sajikumar died of jaundice in December 2019. His brother Bijukumar, who is also in police service, says the new team at the society was very helpful even while Sajikumar was admitted in hospital. “In my 28 years of service, I haven’t come across such a helpful team. With the Kerala Police Welfare and Amenity Fund, they helped pay off hospital bills. Jyothish sir and others at the Police Association helped a lot. And now they have written off the loans too,” says Bijukumar.
“After considering the 36 cases, we decided that the society should take up pending loans of police personnel who died while in service. We would pay off the remaining loans of all such cases before we took charge. And for those who began taking loans after we took charge, we devised two schemes for the purpose,” says Biju.
One is the Death Benefit Scheme and the other is called Care plus. Both the schemes are voluntary.
Those who join the Death Benefit Scheme need to deposit an amount of Rs 500 for a loan of Rs 1 lakh. So if they take a loan of Rs 10 lakh, they need to deposit Rs 5,000. Once they retire and the loan is paid off, this amount will be returned to them. However, if they pass away before that, their pending loans will be written off. But they have to be members of the scheme to be eligible for it.
The other scheme – Care plus – works more or less like a regular medical insurance, but without the criteria you need to qualify for one. “It doesn’t matter what ailments you might already have, you’d still be eligible for every kind of medical treatment you or your family (spouse and children) might need,” Biju explains.
The Care plus scheme, which came into effect in November 2020, requires a police official to pay the total insurance fees, which is Rs 3,600 for every year left in service. So if it is 10 years, they need to pay Rs 36,000. If it is more than 27 years, however, they need to pay only Rs 1 lakh. This will make them eligible to avail treatment expenses of up to Rs 3 lakh every year.
“We have already spent Rs 1,32,00,000 for medical expenses of 177 police officials as part of the scheme. And this is just in 2.5 months,” Biju says.
With about 2,000 new recruits joining the force every year, the funds are only likely to grow and this will help them deal with the expenses.