Report by Kamgar Ekta Committee (KEC) correspondent
50,000 employees of public sector insurance companies National Insurance Company Limited, Oriental Insurance Company Limited, New India Assurance Company, United India Insurance Company Limited and GIC will observe complete strike on January 4 to protest against the policies of the management and the government and to press for their demands.
The employees of the general insurance sector have been agitating for months under the banner of the Joint Forum of Trade Unions and Associations for their demands. They demonstrated across the country on 14th, 21st and 28th December against the arbitrary and one-sided imposition of office policies on a large scale in the name of restructuring, but the management and the government paid no heed. Companies are unethically forced to close hundreds of offices and merge them.
The result of the government’s policy is that in the last 2 years about 1000 offices of the four public sector general insurance companies have been closed. The offices that were closed were all in tier II and tier III cities.
It is clear that the objective of these policies is to promote the private sector by weakening the role of public companies in the insurance sector. With these steps of the government, private insurance companies are being given an open way to capture the insurance market.
The government’s unilateral plan of large-scale closure and merger of hundreds of offices is against the interests of policyholders and common citizens as well.