Retired employees of aided colleges lead pathetic life without pension

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 18

Retired employees of aided colleges have alleged that around 2,400 retired teachers and 1,600 employees of nearly 150 aided colleges of Punjab are victims of the state government apathy. So, they are compelled to lead a pathetic retired life in the absence of any social security and pension benefits from either the state government or college managements. They were brought under the pension scheme by the Government of Punjab in 1996 on the pattern of aided school employees.

Further they claimed that the Higher Education Department also issued a letter to the college managements in this regard on 18 December, 1996. The scheme to bring these employees under the pension scheme was duly passed by the Punjab Legislative Assembly on April 10, 1999. It was duly signed by the Punjab Governor and gazette notification was issued on April 26, 1999. Ironically, the scheme was passed by the then SAD government and the same SAD government repealed the Act, which entitled these employees to pension benefits with a single stroke of pen in December, 2012.

Prof Rajnish Kumar, president of the DAV College Retired Teachers’ Association, Punjab, rued that the reasons cited for repealing the Act in the Punjab Assembly like paucity of funds and the unwillingness of these employees to accept the scheme, were nothing but a bundle of lies. The modalities of the scheme were to be framed and sorted out by the state government and the aided college managements, but due to their failure to do so, the employees are the worst sufferers.

Prof Sukhdev Singh Hundal, president, Private Colleges Retired Employees’ Association, Punjab, said when the employees knocked the doors of the Punjab and Haryana High Court to seek justice and redress of their grievances, the state government kept delaying the issue in the court and finally repealed the Act in December, 2012 leaving these employees at the mercy of the Almighty.

The state government was even fined Rs 10,000 by the High Court for delaying the case. Under these circumstances, these employees were left with no alternative but to approach the Supreme Court of India for justice. The case was filed in July 2016, but till date not even a single hearing of the case had taken place. Meanwhile, more than 40 employees have died without pension, he added.

Representatives of these employees have already called on Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal many times in Bathinda and Chandigarh in this regard, but to no avail.

Prof NK Gosain, press secretary, DAV Colleges Retired Teachers Association, Punjab, lamented that while the MLAs and ministers got pension and other retiral benefits even if elected only once, the so-called nation builders who serve for 35-40 years have been unduly deprived of pension and social security. It is nothing short of a cruel joke. He demanded the immediate implementation of the 1996 Pension Scheme so that these people suffering from various physical and mental ailments in the last years of their lives could get some relief.