Nagaland government employees demand restoration of old pension scheme

KOHIMA — The president of National Movement for Old Pension Scheme (NMOPS), Dr. Manjeet Singh Patel on Thursday termed the New Pension Scheme (NPS) a “scam”, and demanded scrapping of the scheme.

He stated this while addressing a press conference at The Heritage in Kohima with convenor Sudheer Rupji; Dr. Ilang, president of Confederation of All Nagaland State Services Employees’ Association (CANSSEA); Zubemo Lotha Tsanglao ,Vice-president CANSSEA; Moanungsang Jamir, President of Nagaland National Pension System Government Service Employees Forum, and others.

NMOPS has been demanding the restoration of the old pension scheme in place of NPS, which was introduced on January1, 2004 for all Central government employees joining service after the mentioned date. Subsequently, many states including Nagaland joined the new scheme on October 1, 2010.

He said that in Nagaland, more than 30,000 NPS employees are investing 10% of their salaries every month in the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) with Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN).

Read: Submission of life certificate extended for pensioners under EPS

Patel went on to state that NPS is not providing old age social income security, gratuity, death cum retirement gratuity, guarantee on contribution of employee as the corpus is being invested in share market.

He pointed out that five states — Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh — have reverted to the old pension scheme while more than 10 states have formed committees to review the NPS, and appealed to Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio to “look into the matter”.

The Central government formed a committee on April 6, 2023 to review the NPS system which is controlled by Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Act 2013.

He went on to claim that the committee was formed without the membership of the members of the parliament.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ilang maintained that the CANSSEA had submitted a memorandum to the state government to roll back the Old Pension Scheme. He added that pension is not a bounty but a right of the government employee.

 “We have to learn that as late as April 15, 2015, only 32,111 employees generated the Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN) card out of which a little more than INR 1,300 crore have been uploaded into the portal. Our question to the nodal department—Treasuries and Accounts is—where is the money of the employees?” he asked.

He maintained that the government had informed its employees that an amount of around INR 3,500 crore from the NPS was kept in a ‘safe dedicated account’, adding that it is virtual money and the government should not let employees suffer.

Convenor of NMOPS, Sudheer Rupji alleged that the money earned by the government employees is only being used for covering up the objectives of corporate, adding that the scheme is not transparent.

He also informed that in September this year, government employees from across the country would be conducting a march to the parliament to demand scrapping of the NPS.