EPS pensioners’ body complains to PM Modi over minimum pension

The EPS-95 Pensioners Coordination Committee plans to hold a nationwide protest on October 17

The EPS-95 Pensioners Coordination Committee, a body of pensioners covered under the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS), 1995, of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), has complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issues of not increasing the payment of minimum pension and not hiking the government’s contribution to the EPS.

In a letter sent to him recently, the Nagpur-based committee pointed out that the Union government had decided to increase its contribution to up to 18.5% under the unified pension scheme (from 14% under the National Pension Scheme) but it had not acted on the recommendation of a parliamentary committee, popularly known as Bhagat Singh Koshyari Committee, which stated that the government’s contribution under the EPS should go up from 1.16% to 8.33%.

Likewise, the amount of minimum pension had not been increased for 10 years. Also, through an order of the Union Labour Ministry, the provision on higher pension — pension based on actual salary — was scrapped, “causing significant financial loss to pensioners like us,” the committee’s national general secretary Prakash Pathak and legal advisor Dada Tukaram Zode observed in the letter, claiming that in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, they were promised by leaders of the BJP that in 90 days of coming to power, recommendations of the committee in question would be implemented. 

The committee planned to hold a nationwide protest on October 17, the office-bearers added. 

Published - October 04, 2024 03:26 pm IST