Retired Public Sector Bankers Raise Issue Of Unfair Deal Regarding Pension

By Samachar Vishesh News

Chandigarh 15^th July:- Different Associations of retired officers of public sector banks held a press conference regarding their pending issues of pension anomalies and skewed policy related to medical reimbursement.

The conference was spearheaded by All India Punjab National Bank Retired Officers Association, which was represented by its Vice President-H.L. Aggarwal. Several Banks’ pensioners' association office bearers and members spoke against the unfair treatment meted out to Senior citizen (pensioners of public sector banks), by the central government.

While addressing the gathering, H.L. Aggarwal, Vice President of All India Punjab National Bank Retired Officers Association said that pension was introduced in 1995 with the assurance that the pension rules would be framed similar to Government of India or the RBI rules. This did not happen till date. Moreover, though salary kept increasing for working employees but the revision of pension never took place. This created an anomaly due to which a situation has come, where the pension of earlier retired manager is even less than that of present day retire peon.

Clarifying further he said that “Since 1995, pension revision never took place. Since then no policy has been framed for the pensioners, which has created a wide discrimination in the pensions of early retirees and those retiring at a later date.

H.L. Aggarwal, Vice President of All India Punjab National Bank Retired Officers Association said that he  wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Narendra Modi over the pension issues of public sector banks’ pensioners (senior citizens), calling for further intervention in the matter at the highest level.

The pensioners of the different banks highlighted the plight of all public sector bank retired employees’ due to the non -revision of pension issue.

Kuldeep Gupta, Area President of PNB Retired Officers Association of Chandigarh said that it’s our long pending demand for the revision of pension of public sector banks. As we have been neglected for more than 25 years, so we demand that higher authorities personally look into this matter and render justice to us.

Another office bearer said that we demand an increase of the family pension from 15 percent to 30 percent for the retired officers to lead a reasonably good life.

The members demanded to stop the discrimination in the medical facility being provided to the working and nonworking employees.

They demanded to cover the retired employees by health insurance cover at the bank cost. As current premium demand is illogical and skewed. In the present policy, it is difficult for retired officers to bear abnormally high premium expenses from meager pension they received.

The members were hopeful that after formation of the new government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, their grievances would be properly attended to at the earliest.

H L Aggarwal informed that the PMO has forwarded a letter to the Secretary Department of Financial Services (Banking Division) for an early action, which has further forwarded the same to the IBA (Indian Banks’ Association). However, when the retired bankers followed up with IBA officers they simply washed their hands off the issue and turned a blind eye to the senior citizens’ problems.

Due to this type of attitude by the Finance Ministry and IBA (Indian Banks’ Association) this issue has been lingering for the last 25 years which is making the pensioners suffer.