THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Representatives of Left youth organisations and the Yuva Morcha walked out of the meet convened by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy here on Thursday to discuss withdrawal of pension age unification and raising the retirement age limit to 56, which has come into effect recently.
Chandy said that the policy decision was effected to overcome certain administrative problems resulting from the pension age unification introduced by the former LDF Government which had resulted in the effective retirement age for a majority of government employees going up by many months.
The Chief Minister repeated the stance of the government that not even a single job opportunity will be lost as supernumerary posts will be created and all departments have been asked to report vacancies to the PSC at the earliest.
However, representatives of Left youth organisations insisted on knowing whether raising the pension age by phases is a policy of the government. The Chief Minister took a non-committal stand on the issue and confined his clarifications to the current issue.
Dissatisfied with this, T V Rajesh MLA and M Swaraj (DYFI), Mahesh Kakkath and G Udayakumar (AIYF) and Salim P Chacko ( RYF) and others walked out of the meet, after warning that the government will have to face the consequences if it continued with its anti-youth policies in a unilateral manner and went ahead with ignoring the suggestions put forth by youth outfits.
The Left representatives also demanded that the government should officially declare the creation of around 15,000 supernumerary posts and rescind its decision to increase the pension age of ayurveda-homoeo college teachers in the state. Yuva Morcha state president V V Rajesh also joined the walk out. Youth Congress state president P C Vishnunath MLA and others representing pro-UDF youth outfits remained till the end of the meet.