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Letters to the Editor
Hapless PSU retirees
Sir, - A large section of retirees of the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) are facing a hard-time and are in the Below the Poverty Line category.
This is especially so in the case of the older generation of retirees who had joined the PSU in their nationalisation period, i.e. from 1955.
Drawing very poor wages in the early construction years, those in the lower cadres who retired with a meagre package, nowadays, are finding it well-nigh impossible to make both ends meet against the alarming context of hyperinflation- induced inexorable price spiral, erosion of money value and escalating cost of living.
With the interest rates on their trivial fixed deposits also getting spasmodically cut down by the Government, their fixed negligibly small monthly income has brought them down verily to the BPL status.
With the break-up of joint families and sprouting of nuclear families, they are left out in the lurch in the last leg of their lives with psychosomatic disorders old age is heir to.
This section, which was hitherto in the middle/lower middle economic bracket, has been pushed down to BPL, their very survival being on tenterhooks.
It behoves Parliament to rectify forthwith the grievous wrong inflicted on these hapless, helpless PSU retirees, by cancelling the flawed Employee's Pension Scheme, 1995 effective from 16/11/95 and immediately replacing it by introducing statutorily the pucca substantive Central Government pattern pension (50% Last Pay + DA) in lieu of employer's contribution of Provident Fund.
So long as other Government of India enterprises are following regular government pension, the same equitable dispensation may be extended to all CPSU uniformly.
R. Sadagopan,
Chennai
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