Pension anomalies and glaring discriminatory policy
With the correction of pension anomalies in July this year, some pensioners have been overlooked and side-lined causing a glaring injustice to them. The policy adopted by the Department of Pension in arriving at dues to the pensioner has been based on the number of service an employee had put in. It is said that a pensioner should have put in 25 or 30 years service to be eligible for the benefit under the pension anomalies policy.
There are many pensioners who had retired prematurely on multiple grounds. Some pensioners had retired in response to a circular issued by the Department of Public Administration in 1991 implementing a voluntary retirement scheme to prune down the number of public servants, while some others had retired prematurely due to several government departments being closed down. There are also some pensioners who retired on medical grounds. In all these cases, the number of years a pensioner had put in is less than 25 or 30 years, which the Department of Pension has stipulated to be eligible for anomaly benefits. This is highly unfair by the aforesaid categories of pensioners.With the implementation of the correction of salary anomalies of pensioners taking into consideration the number of years of service, a huge disparity between a pension of an officer in the clerical and allied grades and that of a pensioner in minor employee grade who retired under normal circumstances has been created, thus giving rise to an anomaly within an anomaly. The claim by the government that all pensioners get a minimum increase of around Rs. 2,300 per month in incorrect. There are thousands of Pensioners who have not got one cent increase.
The first pension anomaly was corrected in the year 2015 and the aforesaid categories of pensioners were denied the anomaly benefit at that time also.
We, the suffering and disappointed pensioners, therefore, would request the Minister of Finance to please consider the above facts compassionately and direct the Director-General of Pension to do the needful to grant the pension increases of both 2015 and 2019 pension anomalies, to the affected pensioners. Disappointed
pensioners Via email