Friday, December 11, 2009

New retirees likely to lose pension.

I am not a person to criticize all the acts of State Government of Kerala. However regarding the retirement age unification and pension payment I keep strong apprehension about the act of the Government. The Government on unification of the retirement age last year said about the postings in supernumerary vacancies. But nothing happened and many prospective candidates have fled to other states in search of a job and some of them attempted suicide because of utter despair. No one was posted fresh in Kerala last year, nevertheless the pension money thus held back by the government was spent for other purposes. And most probably the new pensioners likely lose pension when they retire on next March 31. The government finds no way to collect a sum Rs 3500 crore to pay back the pension benefits of employees. The diverse scheme with Kerala lottery will bring only a few crores and is quite inadequate to meet the requirement. The plan to invite more FDs to State Treasuries too will not work as the pensioners know well that future is bleak for Kerala Treasuries as it is going to meet a series of ban. The employees, on the other hand, live in fools’ paradise under the assumption that the Finance minister will do the whole lot for the raise of retirement age.

I wonder why the employees about to retire are not sending their pension papers to the AG. They should understand that if they do not send their papers they will not get their pension in a year.

Regarding unification of retirement age and holding back pension benefits of State Employees of Kerala the Government has done a bad work. The Government curtailed the aspirations of unemployed youths and denied financial benefits of retiring employees. The running of a State with pensioners’ money is a bad practice and it would bring unprecedented crisis to coming governments.

K A Solaman

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