Rupsa: Peeved over payment of meagre pensions by the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), pensioners have appealed to people not to vote for the BJP-led government at the Centre in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Sources informed Thursday that a meeting was convened Wednesday by pensioners of the district committees of Balasore and Mayurbhanj in Podadiha village under this policy limits. Balasore district president of the Pensioners’ Association, Anadi Charan Behera presided over the meeting. Hundreds of retired staff of Odisha Lift Irrigation Corporation, Rupsa Jute Mill, Konark Paper and Industries Ltd and Baripada Spinning Mill participated in the meeting. During the meeting, it was decided that the minimum pension amount should be Rs 9,000 as per a ruling by the Supreme Court. Various unions have been agitating all over India for an increase in pensions, dearness allowances and government medical insurance facilities.
However, the state-run EPFO is paying less than `1,000 as pension per month to many people, officials of the committees pointed out. Madhusudan Jena, vice-president of Mayurbhanj District Pensioners’ Association, Bishnu Prasad Mohanty, Balasore District Committee secretary of the same unit, former staff of Odisha Lift Irrigation Corporation, Shyamsundar Jena, former secretaries of Rupsa Jute Mill Workers’ Union, Umesh Kumar Sethi and Janmejaya Parida appealed to the people not to vote for the ruling party. They said that this decision has been taken in a meeting of the All India Pensioners’ Association. Purnachandra Behera, Banshidhar Sahu, Purnananda Pandit, Panchanan Jena, Kamalakanta Panda, Dibakar Senapati, Aniruddha Mantri, Narayan Das, Nityanand Mishra and Trilochan Sahu from various other organisations took part in the discussions.
