The members of the district unit of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) staged a dharna in front of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) office here on Tuesday protesting against intermittent and unilateral procedural changes leading to harassment of pensioners.
Addressing the protesters here, H.V. Rao, secretary of district unit of AITUC, said that the unilateral procedural changes made by the EPFO were causing a lot of trouble to the pensioners.
Aadhaar cards
The Supreme Court had said that Aadhaar was not mandatory for distribution of benefits. Yet, the EPFO was insisting on Aadhaar cards for its members. The pensioners were also being told that they would not get any benefits without Aadhaar cards.
When the Aadhaar cards were being given earlier, only the birth year was mentioned and not the birthdate. In some cases, the date of birth was wrongly recorded on these cards, which forced the members to rectify it to get the benefits. This was despite the fact that the pensioners had already submitted other documents as proof of date of birth.
The EPFO was now insisting on Universal Account Number (UAN) for pension. But the UAN had to be obtained by the employer. However, owing to software and Internet problems, the issuing of UAN was delayed for months. The pensioners are being made to wait till the UAN was given.
Not informed
The EPFO was making lot of changes in its rules and procedures unilaterally, without any notice to the pensioners.
Workers, representatives and trade unions were not being informed about the change in rules and procedures. This was taking the members/pensioners by surprise.
Any unilateral change should be given a time-period for execution.
Dearness Allowance
To keep up with the present inflation, the minimum pension should be increased to at least ₹6,000 per month and variable Dearness Allowance (DA) should be paid to this basic pension.
Pension should be sanctioned within a month of papers received, Mr. Rao said.
K.V. Bhat, president of district unit of AITUC, Shashikala Girish, B. Suresh, Sanjeeva Sherigar, Rama Mulya, Sumati Shetty, Varija Nayak Athrady, Shantha Nayak, Saraswati, AITUC leaders, were present.
