By Shri Alavandar Venu Madhav, Vice President, Singareni Retired Employees Association Hyderabad
There is nothing wrong with claiming that Coal India and Singareni are the only companies in the country with the highest profits and the fastest growing growth rate.
Retirement benefit of employees, in addition to central and state government employees, in the country will continue to grow according to their wage agreement. The first pension scheme for coal retirees was introduced in 1998. Accordingly, the employee is paid 25% of the basic Dearness allowance as in last month of service.
The pension should be paid at today’s market prices. It does not happen.
The same government employees are given a pension of 50% of their salary. There is also a pension increase for retired government employees. Unfortunately, this kind of pension increase is not for coal retired employees. The root cause of this is the agreements made by the trade unions. We do not care about retired employees.
So far, 57 MPs and Union ministers have submitted petitions to increase the pensions of retired coal workers, but to no avail. Coal miners are only paid compliments that they are the dark suns that light up the world.
Also, the medical facilities of the Coal Retired Employees have limited insurance cover of only Rs. 8,00,000.
Coal India and Singareni employees should be recognized as government employees.