Veteran leader Com Ramchander Nair along with other leaders of GIEAIA discussed pensioners issue with GIPSA officials
Kanwar Inder singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ October 24,2024
“Today, under the leadership of Com Ramchander Nair, Veteran leader of General Insurance Employees’ All India Association (GIEAIA) and Vice president of General Insurance Pensioners’ Association (GIPAIF), various issues concerning pensioners and ex-employees were discussed with the General Insurance Public Sector Association (GIPSA) official’s at GIPSA office” said Trilok Singh, General secretary GIEAIA.
Trilok further informed that at their meeting the leaders discussed on key issues like “about 8 Permanent Part Time Sweepers (PTS) of Oriental Ins. Co when all of them had more than 10 yrs. of pensionable service to their credit were upgraded as Full Time Sweepers (FTS) in the year 2002. Since all of them crossed 35 yrs. of age when upgraded, not considering the fact they are already eligible to be covered under the Pension Scheme, 1995, invoking Rule 4 of the said scheme made them to “elect to forgo their right to pension” and brought them all to CPF Scheme, wiping out the entire pensionable service in one go. This act on the part of Oriental, ORIENTAL ALONE, was totally erroneous and unjustified which should be corrected at the earliest by CMD himself by invoking the Rule 54 of the Pension Scheme i.e.’ Power to issue Instructions ‘ at the earliest and do justice to the most vulnerable, downtrodden section of our Society who all happened to be the employees.”
Ashok kumar, Governing body member OIEWS and leader GIEAIA added we also discussed about “the Statutory Special Voluntary Retirement Package/Scheme introduced in the yr. 2003 and 2004 respectively were made applicable to those employees who had minimum 10 yrs and above service and not less than 40 yrs of age. By offering pension according to their total service and last drawn salary in terms of Pension Scheme 1995. Neither the Statutory Scheme nor the Admin Instructions issued later did not make it clear whether the optee has to be a pension optee only. So both Pension Optees as well as CPF optees applied for the Scheme and the COMPETENT AUTHORITIES READILY ACCEPTED THEIR VRS APLICATIONS WITH OUT A WHISPER. Now came the shocker in the form of Admin Instructions where in the companies restricted the pension to only those with more than 20 yrs service only. This led to a spare of cases and finally the Supreme Court of India called the shot and directed the Companies to pay pension to those with less than 20 yrs of service in 2014. However after dilly dallying for more than 8 yrs. and after obtaining a detailed legal opinion from none other than the Solicitor General of India KK Venugopal the companies paid pension to those Special Voluntary Retirement Package( SVRP) / special voluntary retirement schemes (SVRS) optees with less than 20 yrs from the DATE OF RETIREMENT. To the utter dismay of a handful such optees with less than 20 yrs but who happened to be CPF optees at the material time were not paid pension as in the case of similarly placed employees. Now they are running from pillar to post to realise their rightful pension”.
Trilok further added that “there are about 100 odd employees( in LIC/PSGICs) who as Central Provident Fund (CPF) Optees exited the service when they all had more than 20 yrs service to their credit. Since their exit was treated as Resignation, which, in service parlance is termed as “forfeiting entire past service” their option to join the Pension Scheme during 3rd option for pension in 2019 was turned down. Subsequently based on the representations of many such aggrieved employees GIPSA as well as LIC recommended to department of financial services (DFS) to allow pension to them also but the recommendation was turned down by DFS in 2021. Now that Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) with the approval of DFS has issued instructions to member Banks to allow pension to Resignees, we would request GIPSA/LIC to relook at the issue and send recommendation again to DFS.”
“We further urged GIPSA to place the pending important matters of Pensioners and ex employees in the GIPSA Council for an amicable solution. We will further continue to pursue these matters in the coming days at appropriate forums” added Trilok Singh.
