04-04-2006, 03:12 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Hostels for veterans soon </b>
Pioneer News Service / New Delhi
The army, in a major welfare measure for the retired officers and men, is reaching out to them in the hinterland to take stock of their problems and plans to set up "Veterans' Hostel" for old soldiers throughout the country. The Army will also help the families in performing last rites if approached.
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The Army to begin with will now call the retired soldiers as "Veterans" in English and "gauravshali senani" in Hindi and Adjutant General Lieutenant General AS Jamwal is now holding meetings with the veterans in major cities and smaller towns of the country. The focus is on listening to the problems of the veterans or their surviving families and take best possible measures to ameliorate the problems, Army spokesman Colonel SK Sakhuja said here on Monday.
The Adjutant General has already held such meetings in Delhi, Guwahati and Chennai in the past few weeks and will now travel to some other important cantonments as part of this exercise as ordered by the Army chief, the spokesman said.
It may be mentioned here that nearly 50,000 officers and men retire every year and the Army has taken the onerous responsibility of looking after them in a formal manner now, he added.
Appreciating the problems faced by the veterans in their old age, the Army now plans to set up hostels for them in Delhi, Pune and Bangalore and will spread the network of such hostels in other places in the next few years.
Similarly, <b>many veterans have no one to perform the last rites of their near and dear ones and families also lack the resources to do the same for the veterans and the Army will now take care of this sensitive and humanitarian issue.</b>
In fact, the commanding officer of the local Army canteen or the sub-areas will also place a wreath on behalf of the chief of Army staff as a mark of respect to the veteran, Colonel Sakhuja said.
<b>It was also learnt that the project to set up a National War Memorial, a long pending demand of the Armed Forces to honour the men who sacrificed their lives for the country, was in the advanced stage and would most probably come up near India Gate, Delhi. </b>
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Pioneer News Service / New Delhi
The army, in a major welfare measure for the retired officers and men, is reaching out to them in the hinterland to take stock of their problems and plans to set up "Veterans' Hostel" for old soldiers throughout the country. The Army will also help the families in performing last rites if approached.
Â
The Army to begin with will now call the retired soldiers as "Veterans" in English and "gauravshali senani" in Hindi and Adjutant General Lieutenant General AS Jamwal is now holding meetings with the veterans in major cities and smaller towns of the country. The focus is on listening to the problems of the veterans or their surviving families and take best possible measures to ameliorate the problems, Army spokesman Colonel SK Sakhuja said here on Monday.
The Adjutant General has already held such meetings in Delhi, Guwahati and Chennai in the past few weeks and will now travel to some other important cantonments as part of this exercise as ordered by the Army chief, the spokesman said.
It may be mentioned here that nearly 50,000 officers and men retire every year and the Army has taken the onerous responsibility of looking after them in a formal manner now, he added.
Appreciating the problems faced by the veterans in their old age, the Army now plans to set up hostels for them in Delhi, Pune and Bangalore and will spread the network of such hostels in other places in the next few years.
Similarly, <b>many veterans have no one to perform the last rites of their near and dear ones and families also lack the resources to do the same for the veterans and the Army will now take care of this sensitive and humanitarian issue.</b>
In fact, the commanding officer of the local Army canteen or the sub-areas will also place a wreath on behalf of the chief of Army staff as a mark of respect to the veteran, Colonel Sakhuja said.
<b>It was also learnt that the project to set up a National War Memorial, a long pending demand of the Armed Forces to honour the men who sacrificed their lives for the country, was in the advanced stage and would most probably come up near India Gate, Delhi. </b>
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