BENGALURU: Demanding the revision of their pensions that have been pending since 16 years, retired employees of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) staged a protest in front of the RBI office on Tuesday.
According to K V Padmanabhan, secretary of Reserve Bank Retired Employees Association (RBREA), the protest is against non-revision of pension for retirees of RBI and illegal and unwarranted interference of the Indian government in the administrative matters of RBI, an autonomous institution.
The pension has not been revised, reportedly due to interference and instructions from the finance ministry and the government. However, such revision will not result in any burden to the exchequer as the entire expenditure will be met by RBI from its own pension, Padmanabhan added. Fund created for this purpose out of RBI’s Bank Provident Fund (BPF) contributions were surrendered by the employees when they opted for the pension scheme introduced in 1990. This is in line with the Central Govt pension scheme.
“While retired armed forces, lakhs of Central and state government retirees as well as retirees of public sector undertakings were given periodical revision of pension that resulted in a huge financial burden to the government exchequer, the pension of 26,720 RBI retirees were not revised during the last three wage settlements of serving employees in 2002, 2007, and 2012. This resulted in very serious anomalies between the senior retirees and those who retired later,” the RBREA secretary informed.
The basic pension of senior retirees remained stagnant during the last 16 years. According to them, RBI should therefore immediately exercise its power under the autonomy, as clearly pointed out in the report of the parliamentary committee and grant pension updation to its retirees and honour its own written commitment.RBI’s retired employees said that a protest was their last resort as various representations and appeals to the RBI Governor, Finance Minister, Prime Minister and President of India did not yield any relief to the retirees.