The Punjab cabinet on Friday gave approval to the notification for implementing the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) in the State.
The decision was taken in the meeting chaired by Chief Minister Bhagwan Mann here.
An official statement said that the State government has approved the Old Pension Scheme for its employees currently covered under National Pension Scheme (NPS), which the statement claimed will benefit more than 1.75 lakh government employees currently covered under NPS. “In addition to this, 1.26 lakh employees are already covered under the existing Old Pension Scheme. The scheme is expected to benefit more than 4,100 Employees in the next five years alone,” it said.
The statement said the scheme is aimed at safeguarding the future of government employees and recognizing their immense contribution towards the State. “In order to ensure that the scheme being introduced is financially sustainable for the exchequer in future also, the State government will be contributing proactively towards the creation of a pension corpus which will service the pension in future to the beneficiaries of the scheme,” it added.
“This contribution towards the pension corpus will be ₹1,000 crore per annum initially and will gradually increase in the future. In addition to this, the current accumulated corpus with NPS is ₹16,746 crore for which the state government will request Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), Government of India to refund this amount for effective utilization at its end,” said the statement.
