Meeting with LIC CEO P and GS Mumbai

Dear friends,
We had a meeting with CEO of LIC P & GS at Mumbai on 13th December 2010, and we could solve the problem of Oriental insurance Pensioners who were getting their DA in arrears to get them the same on the same month it is due. From Febraury 2011 onwards all the Oriental pensioners will get their DA with the pension.
We have made a strong plea with the CEO that when the cheques are lost in transit pension should be credited immedietely on submission of indemnity bond by the pensioners. At present LIC is waiting for the cheque to become stale and pensioners are suffering for six months.
We were informed that it is news to them and they have taken steps to send another circular to all the LIC offices to pay the pension immedietely on receipt of the indemnity bond.
We have also taken up the matter of late credit in some of the centres especially to those who opted for ECS.
We took up the matter of issuing the certificate/form 16 to all the pensioners before the last date of April so that it will be easy for those who file income tax returns, for which they have agreed to implement the same.
They also requested us to opt for ECS so that all these above problems can be easily solved and we have assured them to convey the message to all the pensioners.
V.A.NAGARAJAN
GENERAL SECRETARY

OUR TRANSFER PETITION AT SUPREME COURT

DEAR FRIENDS,

At last after a long struggle we could sense some success. On the 18th of this month, our case came up for hearing at the last hour of the court proceedings and the management was represented by Sri Gupta senior counsel and we were represented by Sri Nageswara Rao Senior counsel. Managemnet was bent upon delaying the case, argued with the intention of transferring the cases to one of the high courts. But our counsel convinced the judge with better arguments and placement of facts finally got the order of transferring the 7 batch of petitions filed by us to the Hon'ble Supreme court. Now the case is posted to 3rd January for review before the same Bench.

Now is the time for us to come together and prepare ourselves to fight the final battle with all moral and financial strength. We appeal to all the other members of the SVRS community who are yet to join us, to shed the differences and come with us for the final battle by becoming our members and be party to the result we are going to get from the Supreme Court.

Friends, this is the last chance for you to join the struggle and we hope every one of the aggreived employee will join us and show the management that we are the formidable force to reckon with.

with regards

nagarajan

General Secretary.

Our case at Sup.Court

Dear friends,
The Transfer Petititon of our Association is coming up before The Justices Comprising of Hon'ble Justice Sri. Althamas Kabir and Hon'ble Justice Pathak. on 18th October. The first major step of getting the petition admission is on and our Association is taking up all concerted efforts. We appeal to all of you to pray the Almighty for admission of the case. We are not taking any chances and we are approaching the best Advocates to appear for us. But whatever steps we take God's willing ness will only prevail and that willingness to be in our favor we all should pray. Please send your prayers up and down will come His blessings.
General Secretary.

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 15^th 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 4^th of the month and at times even on 7^th or 8^th 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 22^nd of this month (Cheque payment). There are pensioners who still did not get it. The fact remains that the cheques were posted only on 20^th 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.

THE FIGHT IS ON

Dear friends,

We are progressing slowly towards our final show down in the Supreme court case in spite of our earnest efforts to speed up. We are facing hurdles from management and also from vested interests but steadily we are moving towards the end with utmost patience and perseverance. Of course this is not possible without your earnest support for the right cause. We expect the Supreme court to open after vacation on July 7th and we will get our Transfer petition listed after that.

We request your continuous moral and financial support for our earnest attempt to get the denied benefits. We are also going to various places to explain the present position of our case but with little constrain in finance which we are sure that you will support, at the time of need.

We took up the challenge of getting the Med-claim direct payment facility for the retirees covered under Staff Med-Claim in 2004 immediately after the formation of our Association and ofcourse it progressed slowly but steadily we were able to convince GIPSA to entrust the work of formulating a pattern to United India management and after 5 years, we were able to get the same in 2010. Thanks to Sri. Verma DGM, for his bold attitude in implementing the same in United India after a thorough study.

We immediately took up with the other companies and kudos to Sri. Ramdoss CMD who implemented it within 15 days in Oriental and once he took over in New India as CMD he implemented it there also.

National management was bit slow and we met the General Manager Shri. Brahma at Kolkata, with Shri. Pathak DGM, and they were very considerate and wanted to improve the facility and implement, as we requested, the benefit to be on par with the regular employees. We are happy to inform you that Mr. Brahma has kept his word and he has implemented the circular with an additional clause of 50% advance payment, where the Hospitals refuse to accept the facility, subject to other conditions.

We visited New India H.O. during the month of June and had discussions with the Pension Dept. and as well with Sri.K.V.Krishna DGM, (Personal) to sort out the problems of Pensioners, which included one more option for those went out of the Staff Med Claim and Family pensioners who missed payment of premium on the due date.

We had a meeting with the Chief Officer of Life insurance Corporation P & GS, Sri. Satyanandam with the specific agenda to sort out problems faced by Pensioners in getting Form 16 and certificate of total pension received during the year for those who did not come under Income tax. We also complained him about the bouncing of cheques of New India pensioners during the month of April and May, which was sorted out by our interference and inter action with LIC Mumbai and the Bankers. He was apologetic about the happening and assured us to take remedial action. Our main demand of DA payment to Oriental pensioners, who receive by cheque, as and when it is due, was well received and we expect them to take action at least before the next payment in November.

Friends, truthfulness and sincerity will always succeed and we are sure that we will end up only in success.

Please ensure payment of SUBSCRIPTION immediately since that will only keep us going and strengthen our fight for the right cause.

With regards,

GENERAL SECRETARY

Friends
The expectation of our Association to get the Transfer Petition to be referred to the Court for final hearing, on 17th March 2010, did not materialize and the case is again postponed to 3rd May 2010, since the acknowledgement for serving notice to one of the Mumbai Respondent did not reach the Registrar, even though all the four companies have filed their counter.

Now the Association is concentrating on other issues and we met some of the Members of Parliament and submitted our Memorandum for implementing our Charter of Demands in the ensuing revision of pay scales which is due to the Working employees. We also met the Minister for State for Finance and appraised him about our demands and submitted a Memorandum.

We took up the matter of Mediclaim Direct Payment Facility for National and New india with the concerned Head Office Officials and they have assured to implement in April 2010.

We are also contacting the individual members, by arranging small group meetings at their place of convenience and taking up their grievances with the Management and solving them.

Patience and Perceiverence will always pay.

Nagarajan

CHENNAI MEET

HI!
Let us start with a good news that our DA will raise by 91 slabs around 20% increase on your basic pension from March.

Our Chennai meet on 30th Jan 2010, was overwhelmingly succesful with good participation and interaction from our members.

We started with prayer and with Mr.Ponraj, our Working President set the ball rolling superbly compering the whole meeting.

President Shri V.Ravishanker elaborately dealt with Mediclaim especially the need of the direct payment facility for pensioners in the present cicumstance, where the treatment cost is soaring, and appreciated the work of our Association in the introduction of the same in Oriental and United, and the struggle we are putting in getting it in National and New India likely to be introduced shortly.

Dr.Rajagopalan Joint Secty., spoke about our achievements in the past 6 years and introduced all the representatives from LIC, POST OFFICE, SHRIRAM INVESTMENTS and Benefit fund, to speak about their products, for the benefit of our members, to choose the right portfolio to re invest their money, since by March2010, our previous investments comes to a close.

Our Genl.Secty. Shri.V.A.Nagarajan spoke about the need for finance to fight the cases in Supreme Court and discussed elaborately about the case itself. He cleared, beyond doubt, the apprehension in the minds of PF optees, whether they will be benefited because of the case in Supreme Court, of course in the affirmative.

The meeting ended with the full, elaborate, detailed explanation about the case and the advantage position we are now in, by our Chair person Shri.A.G.Gajapathy.

With National Anthem we dispersed for small snacks.

NAGARAJAN

Court hearing on 21/1/10

Friends,
As usual the hearing on 21/01/10 went on expected lines, but in one of the petitions the Management declared that they are filing the counter in the evening of 21/01/10. Hence all the chances are given to the management and the Registrar posted the case to 17th March 2010.
We expect that on 17th March the Registrar will fix up a date for hearing before the Judges and we are preparing to face the case of admission of Transfer Petition in court.

National management and New India management are yet to announce the direct payment facility on medi-claim for retirees and we are harping on them.

nagarajan