RBI employees stage protests on pension issue

Central bank has been trying to update the pension drawn by its retirees but govt remains non-committal

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) employees and officers, including retirees, held rallies in all offices of the central bank on Thursday, demanding pensions be updated and a fresh option to join the pension scheme in lieu of the contributory provident fund (CPF) scheme.

The pension of retired employees of the central bank continues to get 50 per cent of the last pay drawn, whereas the pension for central government employees get periodically revised with every pay commission-recommended wage revision, said a statement from the All India Reserve Bank Employees Association. 

The central board of the RBI has been trying for the past few years to update the pension drawn by the retirees in line with central government employees, but the government remains non-committal. The RBI governors, both Urjit Patel now and Raghuram Rajan before him, assured the government that the cost will be borne by the central bank itself, without burdening the exchequer, but the government hasn’t given its nod. Recently, Patel had written to the government to introduce the pension scheme option. 

The RBI introduced the pension scheme for its employees joining after November 1990 and gave an option to existing employees to choose between the pension scheme and CPF scheme. The government then put an embargo from 2002 onwards on the RBI offering its remaining employees to switch over to the pension scheme from the CPF scheme. 

However, in the first week of August, the Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation recommended that the RBI be given the nod to introduce the options to its employees to switch over to the pension scheme, “terming government fiat as arbitrary and not backed by statute,” said the statement. 

The RBI central board met at Ahmedabad on Thursday where the RBI unions urged to take up the issue with the government on an urgent basis.