A two-hour walkout strike was staged by class 3 and 4 employees of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), on the banner of Insurance Corporation Employees’ Union (ICEU) of Visakhapatnam Division, affiliated to All India Insurance Employees Association (AIIEA), in protest against the IPO of LIC here on Wednesday.
Addressing the participants of the protest, Ch Narasinga Rao, CITU AP State Committee leader, said that the LIC was built up into a monolithic organisation with the savings of the policyholders. The government was moving ahead with this proposal without taking the opinion of the 42 crore policyholders, who are the majority stakeholders, he said.
The LIC was started by merging 256 private life insurance companies and formed into a public sector company by an Act of Parliament in 1956 by investing a mere ₹5 crore. In 2011, the capital was raised from ₹5 crore to ₹100 crore. Since then LIC has grown by leaps and bounds and has contributed to the government for its nation building activities and other social welfare measures. It has paid a dividend of ₹29,682 crore to the government. But the government was bringing in IPO in LIC merely to ease the entry of a few corporates and parting with the hard earned money of the policyholders for the benefit of shareholders, he alleged.
Mr. Narasinga Rao said that the desperation of the government to sell shares of LIC to mop up some resources for meeting the fiscal deficit was evident. This desperation was all the more evident from the fact that the government has drastically brought down the valuation of LIC from the earlier estimates of around ₹15 lakh crore to ₹6 lakh crore.
He also alleged this was a serious breach of trust with the millions of policyholders and citizens of this country who have supported LIC all these years. This was the most blatant effort to sell the valuable assets of the nation built by the sweat and toil of the workforce with support from the insuring public.
The All India Insurance Employees’ Association (AIIEA) was of the opinion that IPO was the first step towards privatisation of the LIC. The IPO would undermine the very foundational objectives of the LIC. All the trade unions in the public sector have registered their protest against the IPo of LIC.
Employees from all branches participated in the protest.
G. Varaprasad, general secretary, also spoke. M. Kameshwari, president, ICEU, presided.
