Telangana teachers to join all-India protest by Central, State employees in New Delhi

Hyderabad: Protesting about their various unmet demands and responding to the joint call of Central and State government employees, members of Telangana State United Teachers’ Federation (TSUTF) will be participating in the Chetavani Rally to be held at Ramleela Maidan of New Delhi on November 3 at 10 am.

Around 500 members from TSUTF are expected to join the all-India protest rally along with thousands of employees from various other government departments.

‘Scrap NPS, fill up vacancies, regularise workers, hike pension’

The main demands of TSUTF include annulling the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Act, scrapping of new National Pension Scheme (NPS), regularising all contractual, outsourced, daily waged employees including health, education and postal Group D Service, filling up of all vacancies in Central and State government departments and public sector units (PSUs) urgently and enhancing the basic pension of pensioners by 5 per cent at the age of 65, 70, 75 and 80 years.

‘Stop privatization of PSUs, abandon NEP’

The protesting members also asked the government to stop the privatisation and corporatisation of PSUs including LIC and downsizing of government departments and to ensure democratic trade union rights, review the de-recognition order of postal unions NFPE (National Federation of Postal Employees), AIPEU (All India Postal Employees Union) - Class 3 and ISRO Staff Association, and abandon the National Education Programme (NEP 2020).

They further demanded the constitution of the Eighth Central Pay Commission, the release of the confiscated DA arrears for 18 months, removal of all riders or restrictions on the Compassionate Employment Assistant Scheme.

Explaining why the employees want the scrapping of the new NPS, Ch Ravi, the state general secretary of TSUTF and vice president of the School Teachers Federation of India (STFI) said, “Under the old pension scheme, the employee need not contribute a single rupee but the government used to pay 50 per cent of the last basic pay drawn by the employee as monthly pension post-retirement to the employee. It was simple and hassle-free.”

“However, under the NPS that came into effect in the Centre and States in 2004, the government cuts 10 per cent from the DA and basic pay of the employee and contributes an equal amount of 10 per cent. This 20 per cent is invested in the share market. On retirement or after death, the employee/family gets the net accumulation value under individual PRAN (Permanent Retirement Account Number). This PRAN under NPS has 60 per cent of the employee’s accumulated assets as gratuity and the remaining 40 per cent has to be compulsorily invested as annuities. The interest on the annuities would be the pension amount, which is barely a few thousand rupees. That is why, we want scrapping of NPS and reverting to the old pension system,” stated Ravi.

Regarding demands for abandoning the NEP, Ravi said, “We are opposed to the NEP 2020 because education under this new policy is centralised and commercialised and not federal. The states are not given their due recognition even though education comes in the concurrent list in the seventh schedule of the Indian Constitution, which means both the Centre and the States should have a say in matters of education.”