CHENNAI: Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu said the government would constitute a committee to study the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) announced by the Government of India (GoI). He said based on the committee’s recommendations, the scheme would be implemented in a manner suitable to Tamil Nadu.
The minister said this while responding to a query from DMK MLA CVMP Ezhilarasan during the zero hour. Thennarasu said though the GoI has announced the UPS as an alternative to the contributory pension scheme (CPS) and the national pension scheme (NPS), it is yet to release detailed guidelines on the scheme’s implementation. He said the state committee will be formed after the guidelines are issued by GoI.
The Tamil Nadu Secretariat Association (TANSA), an association of employees in secretariat, condemned the minister’s “Pongal gift”, referring to the announcement.
TANSA president G Venkatesan alleged forming a committee is tantamount to diluting the decision on the long-pending demand of state government employees to revert to the old pension scheme. He blamed the DMK government for failing to deliver on its electoral promise in this regard.
He said TANSA will stage a demonstration on January 24 on finance minister’s announcement on UPS besides other issues of indefinite freezing of surrendered leave encashment, and failure to fill up 4.5 lakh vacancies.
S Daniel Jaisingh, treasurer of the Tamil Nadu Government Employees Association (TNGEA) said the UPS is not acceptable and the state government employees are keen on their demand to revert to the Old Pension Scheme. He said the pension retired employees would receive will be lesser in UPS and the scheme is disadvantageous in other aspects as well.
MP Murugaiyan, president of the Tamil Nadu Revenue Officials’ Association, said the finance minister’s statement was disappointing since the employees have been struggling to scrap the Contributory Pension Scheme and go back to the old pension scheme for the past two decades.
R Elangovan, president of the Dakshin Railway Pensioners Union told TNIE the UPS is disadvantageous compared to the old scheme.