E P F Pension

Dear friends,

Employees Provident Fund Pension is a welfare measure introduced by Government of India mainly for personals working in private companies. When I was working in Beena Rubber Works, Thirurkkad, Angadippuram in 1979, workers union under CITU submitted a memorandum for introducing Contributory Provident Fund Scheme in the company. At that time a small scale Industry can function without CPF for about five years and after that they have to provide these facilities to their employees. In order to evade from this demand they closed the factory in the name of pollution and restarted the company in Pangh as Glen View Rubber Works and Beena Rubber Works was shifted to Yadavgiri, Mysore. The employees were retrenched and I was posted in Mysore. Even though I was not getting CPF, I was paid Rs 800/- plus free lodging in Mysore.

During my tenure in Mysore I got an interview card from Employment Exchange, Calicut for the Interview of Technical Assistant in CWRDM and I attended the interview. The interview board consisted of Executive Director Er P Kumaraswamy, Water Management (Agri) Division Head Dr V K Vamadevan, Water Quality and Environment Division(now Environment Studies Division) Head i/c Dr S A Abbasi (now Professor,Center for Pollution Control and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering & Technology, Pondicherry University) and Registrar Shri Paulose. Myself, Ms Joycee Syriac (now working in Rubber Board) and Mr K Lakshmanan (now Retired) were selected and got appointment in Water Management (Agri) Division. After joining in CWRDM I also became a member of Employees Provident Fund. My pay scale was Rs 380-640 and the total amount was Rs 693 /- only, still I preferred CWRDM because it was an autonomous Research Institute established by Government of Kerala which is near to my residence and my presence in the family at that time was essential as my father was ailing from paralysis.

Employees Provident Fund authorities introduced Family Pension Scheme in 1971 (FPS-71). In this scheme no pension is available when the member is alive. After the death of the member spouse only gets pension. An amount of 3.34% was collected for pension fund. This system ceased when new Employees Pension Scheme (EPS-95) came in to existence. The new scheme came in to existence with effect from 15th November 1995. Under this scheme an amount of 8.33% of wages (maximum wages considered for this purpose is Rs 6500) is collected for this fund and Government also contributes 1.16% of wages to this welfare fund (ie; maximum amount that is collected per head for this fund is 541+75=616 ). Under this new scheme member gets pension, even though it is very meager. After the death of the member, his spouse and two children below the age of 25 also gets pension. The maximum amount of salary considered for pension scheme is Rs 6500 and hence full pension available after 35 years of service since 15th November 1995 is Rs 3250 only. Even if you are getting a salary of Rs 50,000 per month you will get only Rs 3250/- as pension per month. This is a strange socialism applied to the employees working in some of the quasi Government organizations and private companies.

A Government employee gets half of their pay plus dearness allowance as full pension for a service more than 29 years in State Government Department, but it is not applied to Quasi Government Organisations. After each 5 year, pay revision occurs and the pension is updated. These facilities are also not avalable to PF Pensioners even thouh at the time of starting the scheme it was stated that revision will occur at an interval of 10 years. Now more than 15 years elapsed and no revision has occured but curtailed the benifits like Commutation and Capital Return Benifits given in the initial stages. Those who have opted for commutation is also suffering because even after completion of commutation period (ie 100 months) the full pension is not reinstated.

CWRDM Employees Association on 15th December 1980 submitted a memorandum to Dr Subba Rao, Honorable Minister for Irrigation and Chairman of Governing Body of CWRDM, along other things, to introduce pension scheme instead of Contributory Provident Fund. Latter all Unions demanded for introducing pension scheme to the employees working under Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment. I also attended some of the meetings conducted by KSCSTE in this regard. This is a long pending request to the Kerala Government and now Honorable Finance Minister Dr T M Thomas Isaac in his Budget Speech held on 10th February 2011 has stated that "Pension Scheme would be extended to employee in Science & Technology Institutions. Independent pension funds would be established for this purpose in different Institutions. However Governments commitment would be limited to a fixed quantum". This is a good improvement but it is not praise worthy because the permanent employees are fully paid from Government fund and hence the Government itself has to find provision for payment of pension also. In the case of PF Pension and Central Government New pension Scheme 10% of the wages goes to Pension Fund but here the contribution is 12% and hence Government itself has to look after the welfare measure. Science & Technology Institutions are not profit bearing institutes and hence if funds from Government part is "limited", then at the old age pensioners may not get pension properly and they will be put in disaster. Kindly avoid such circumstances in the name of Pension!!!

With best wishes,

ktv