PASIGHAT, 5 Aug: In solidarity with the demand for restoration of the old pension scheme (OPS) by the state unit of the National Movement for Old Pension Scheme (NMOPS), the East Siang district unit of the Confederation of Service Associations of Arunachal Pradesh (CoSAAP), led by its president Takeng Samior, convened a meeting here on Saturday with the heads of various government departments and “the heads and federating service association heads of the East Siang unit” to “hear the grievances of the government employees who have subscribed to the defective National Pension System (NPS),” the CoSAAP unit informed in a release.
It said that, during the meeting, the executive members of the East Siang NMOPS unit highlighted the grievances of the NPS employees through a briefing and distributed pamphlets containing the cons of the NPS and the pros of the OPS.
President of the district unit of the Arunachal Teachers Association (ATA), Tabung Ering said that “the nature of job is same and the work is same; then why is there a disparity in giving pension? There should be one pension for all the employees. All employees should be covered under the OPS, instead of the NPS, which has no future security.”
He added that the district ATA unit “is ready to support to any extent the movement for restoration of the OPS in the state.”
East Siang CoSAAP secretary Talop Darang said, “If MLAs and MPs can get OPS for serving only five years with many benefits, why are the government employees, after serving for 30-35 years, not rewarded with the OPS?”
He, too, said that the district CoSAAP unit “is ready to support any democratic movement against the defective NPS,” and added that “all the OPS benefitted employees of the state must strongly support the movement of the NMOPS Arunachal unit.”
District CoSAAP unit chairman Samior appealed to the state government to “look into the demand for restoration of the OPS to all the NPS employees.”
“Our state has more than 28,000 employees who come under NPS, and lakhs of their family members are dependent on them for everything,” he said, and added that “we are also not feeling good when half of the state employees are getting the better pension and the other half of the employees are crying for it.”
“There must be one pension for all employees,” he said.
