BANGALORE: More than 10 years after taking voluntary retirement from India’s first public sector undertaking - Indian Telephone Industries Limited (ITI), Shama Rao is not a happy man. He is still waiting for his pension dues. At the age of sixty eight, this former assistant engineer of ITI sees himself in a desperate battle for what he believes is his rightful share of earning.
Around 700 employees and officers, including Shama Rao, retired from ITI between 1992 and 1994. Their wage which was to be revised in 1992, was not revised on time. The revision finally took place in 1995 and the ITI issued a circular saying that the revision would be with effect from 1992. Though the wage revision was with effect from 1992, the employees who chose to retire between 1992 and 1994, were given retirement benefits based on the wages which were in effect before the revision.
Shama Rao and his colleagues filed a case in Karnataka Hhigh Court. In 2002, the court ruled in their favour and the ITI management filed an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court. There stands the matter.
Speaking to the this website’s newspaper Shama Rao said, “We are financially and physically weak. Some of our fellow retirees are no more. We approached many officials, knocked many doors, but to no avail.” Having apprised himself of the issue, Lok Sabha Speaker Somanath Chatterjee recently wrote to Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology A Raja. In a letter dated 2, 2008, the Speaker said, “The judgment by the Hhigh Court was delivered as early as in 2002. It appears that thereafter ITI appealed against the judgment to the Supreme Court in 2003 and the matter is still pending before the apex court. It is quite obvious that these retired people cannot afford to engage expensive lawyers to contest the appeal filed by ITI, which has sufficient resources.” Further the Ministry of Law and Justice, Department of Legal Affairs, has in a note dated Ooctober 24, 2008 directed the Ministry of Communications to give a suitable reply to the petitioner - Shama Rao, within 30 days. Rao though has received no communication.
“The management, instead of honouring the order, appealed to the Supreme Court in 2003, where the case is resting,” said Shama Rao.
Recollecting the long years spent in service, he lamented, “We served the organisation for more than thirty years. Is this the way to treat us?” While the case rests in the Supreme Court, Shama Rao and his colleagues have old age catching up with them and are losing interest. “I lost my wife in 2005 as I had no money to treat her. Please do something before it is too late,” Shama Rao appealed.
