Monday, September 27, 2010

Dear friends
Our Transfer Petition in supreme court did not come up before the Registrar on 7th Sep as expected because of the delay in completing some formalities. On our part we have completed every thing and now waiting for the Court to list our case. Once we get the dates we will publish it in the website.

But we have taken up the general grievances of the Retired people with the LIC Mumbai, Which is controlling the whole P and G S department. The letter is reproduce here below.

To

Sri.Sashi Kumar,

Chief officer,

P & GS Dept.

Life Insurance Corporation of India,

Head Office,

Mumbai.

Sir,

Sub: Pension Annuity payments of Public Sector

General Insurance Retired Employees.

Ref: Our tel con with you on 15th Sep, 2010

We refer to the above tel-con with you and as desired by you we are giving details of our grievances below:

1) D.A payments of Oriental Pensioners who receive it by cheque is not paid as and when it is due, but paid in arrears, whereas the Pensioners who opted for ECS are given as and when it is due. Thanks for the intervention of Sri. Satyanandam in the above matter. Please ensure the payment as and when it is due, since there is no delay in payment of annuity by the company.

2) Intimation of change in Annuity pension every six months will help the annuitants and which is statutory on your part. On interaction with your offices in all the four metropolitan cities, they are of the view that the programme is not designed for such extraction of letter and they are forced to type for every annuitant, which is impossible with the given staff strength. If you can use your good office, to update the module with such facility, it will solve the problem of retirees.

3) Form 16 is now sent to all the pensioners who are deducted with income tax by the month of June only, and that too only for those who ask for it and if it comes before the end of May every year it will be easy for the retirees to file their returns on time. We also request you to send the certificate showing the total pension received during the year to all the annuitants since everyone is filing returns.

4) There are places where retirees are debited with collection charges by banks and there should be some arrangement with the banks from your side so as not to deduct such charges, since it is earned wage for the Pensioners and they have the right to get the actual amount due.

5) Ecs facility is very good and advantageous to both LIC and the annuitant but on many occasions the credit comes late for want of some details, either from your side or from the side of the pensioners, hence instant credit facility should be given to the Pensioners.

6) L I C offices are not responding to our correspondence through Email and we are at loss to know the reasons, which in turn increases the anxiety level of the pensioners. Please ensure that your officers respond for the Emails. I would like to mention that our experience with your Delhi Office is the worst and with the others there is no complaint.

7) Your Mumbai office is crediting the pension on the penultimate day of the month, where as the other three regions are releasing it only on 4th of the month and at times even on 7th or 8th of the month, if intervening Holidays come in between. This time we had the worst experience with National and the pensioners got the payment only on 22nd of this month (Cheque payment). There are pensioners who still did not get it. The fact remains that the cheques were posted only on 20th of this month. This is too much of delay on the part of LIC. We had one solace in the above matter that the response from the staff members were exemplary and consoling.

Hence, we request you to follow the same policy of Mumbai in all the other regions, so that uniformity is followed.

We on our part has requested all the pensioners to opt for ECS and even went to the extent of canvassing for it.

In our earlier meeting with Sri Satyanandam, he suggested to decentralize the payment to all the zonal offices which will make our job easy. But, we request you to consult with our Head office before doing the same. We also suggest for a triangular meeting of ourselves, yourselves and all the four H O pension department officials, which will help all of us in solving the problems.

With sincere hope and regards,

sd.V.A.NAGARAJAN

GENERAL SECRETARY

After seeing the letter, the Chief officer of the P and G S Department, seeing the seriousness of the grievances, deputed his Personal Secretary Shri. Parameswaran to talk to us at Chennai on 27th of September, 2010, at the Zonal office of LIC. Our team had detailed discussion and he has assured us to solve all the problems with in the end of next month. He also assured us that the Oriental pensioners will start getting the D.A payment (cheque optees) from the next block.

We also took up the matter of 'cheques lost in transit'. Now the LIC is issuing payment only after the original cheque becomes stale and it takes 6 months. We stressed the point that "Pension is our earned wage and the pensioner has the right to earn it when it is due." Pensioner cannot be penalised for the mistake of the postal department with which neither the LIC nor the Pensioner has any control. And we demanded the immediete payment of the pension without waiting for the confirmation from the Bank and without any delay.

And the Official concerned agreed with our argument and accepted to look in to the matter immedietely.

All the other points were discussed thread bare and we were assured by the concerned official that every thing will be set right within a month.

With Regards

NAGARAJAN.V.A.

GENERAL SECRETARY.