Bengaluru, August 19: India Association of Coal Executives (AIACE) representatives consisting of Sri R K Chowrasia, Sri. A. Chatterjee & Sri. R. A. Manjunath Prasad on Tuesday met Hon’ble MP of Bengaluru South, Sri. Tejasvi Surya & handed over a memorandum on Interest on NPS (Coal India Executives defined contribution pension scheme) & revision of pension under CMPS 1998 on 18th August,2020.
The AIACE representatives said they had made several representations to Coal India, Coal Mines Provident Fund Commissioner and Ministry of Coal regarding the above issues but got no response.
The details of the memorandum are:
- Payment of Interest due to delayed finalization of CIL Executive Defined Contribution Pension Scheme-2007
As per the revision of pay of executives of CIL with effect from 01-01-2007, the employer’s contribution to Superannuation Benefits @ 9.84% of Basic pay and Dearness Allowance is to be remitted to Annuity Provider through a trust. CIL finalized this scheme and started remitting the amount in February 2019 to the trust set up for this purpose. However, the interest for the delay of over 12 years from January 2007 to February 2019 has still not been released. CIL has retained the entire corpus (amount as on 31st March 2015 was 1109.71 crores) and has earned interest on it. It is understood that the matter has been referred by Coal India Ltd. to the Ministry of Coal for directives and is still not resolved.
Due to the inordinate delay in implementing the scheme, the retired executives have suffered huge financial loss. Some of the retirees have expired during the intervening period and their families have been deprived of their rightful claim.
- Revision of Pension under Coal Mines Pension Scheme.
Coal Mines Pension Scheme, 1998 came into effect from 31st March 1998. There is a provision in the Scheme for periodic review and revision of the amount of Pension. However, no such revision has been taken place during the last 22 years resulting in payment of meagre amount of pension as low as 200 per month. The pension of some of the Directors and CMDs of CIL and its Subsidiaries retired prior to 1st January 2007 is so little that they are ashamed to reveal the amount of pension being received by them. There has been gross negligence in managing the pension by the Board of Trustees as pointed by CAG in its report of 2017; because of which about 5 lakhs pensioners are suffering.
The representatives requested to MP for his intervention and speedy approval of payment of interest from 1st January, 2007 at the compensatory interest rate and immediate revision of pension under CMPS, 1998.
“This noble gesture from your end will go a long way in ensuring speedy justice to retired executives and their dependents,” the representatives said.
