Letter to BS: A 50% pension cut is like adding insult to injury

A 50% cut on pensioners, as announced by the Te­lan­gana government, is insensitive

Apropos your news report “After Te­langana, Maharashtra becomes second state to cut govt workers’ pay” (March 31). The announcement is not only bold but also inevitable. It re­mains to be seen whether the central government would follow suit. Pay cuts, though painful, are preferable to job losses. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many employees in the private sector faced both. On the other hand, the central government employees are used to getting hikes from every pay commission, which is invariably followed by the state governments, with most of them re­portedly spending over 90 per cent of their revenues on wage bills alone. When fighting a global crisis requires enormous resources, there is no alternative to enforcing such pay cuts. However, a 50 per cent cut on pensioners, as announced by the Te­lan­gana government, is insensitive, considering that they only draw 50 per cent of their average pay for the last 10 months of service. To enforce a fu­rther 50 per cent cut at a time of falling interest rates on deposits and rising inflation is like adding insult to injury.

V Jayaraman  Chennai

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