Bankers Write To President Of India Who Seldom Respond And Act

To: 
Shri Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, President of India 
Shri Mathew Thomas, Additional Secretary to the President 
Private Secretary to the President 

RE : PETITION for Revision/ Updation of Pension of Bank Retirees 

•The pension of bank retirees (and there are hundreds of thousands of them) has stayed at the same level since it was sanctioned decades back. 
•The pensions of retirees from other sectors in comparable positions is ten times as high, if not more. 
•Bank retirees are finding it difficult to subsist on the pittance they receive as pension. 
•These retirees who have contributed significantly to the cause of nation-building in the pre and post-nationalisation days are being ignored.

An 88-year old colleague of mine retired from a public sector bank in 1985 as one of its Regional Managers. The monthly pension that he is being paid is about Rs 4,000. One can very well imagine how difficult it is for an octogenarian couple to live on this meagre sum in these days of inflation and spiralling cost of medical care. Bank pensioners are being humiliated; their social status has eroded considerably over the years. 

A young man whom this gentleman had recruited as his stenographer retired last month as a stenographer. He receives Rs 23,400 every month as pension. An officer who retires today from the same cadre as this gentleman gets a monthly pension of Rs 34,200. The pension he gets is much below the pension drawn by a peon who retired recently. 

This is how banks in India are treating officers with decades of unblemished and meritorious service in the pre and post-nationalisation days when they rendered yeomen services to make bank nationalisation a success. This generation of retired employees, who toiled hard and contributed significantly for national reconstruction, have been sadly and cruelly ignored. Many of them are no more and those who are still alive lead miserable lives in suffering and are struggling.
This huge disparity is because pension is not updated in tandem with every revisions in the salary scales of serving officers. It is pathetic that bank pensioners are far behind their counterparts who retired from other sectors. Even a comparison is painful. The pension that a Lineman (Class IV Category) who has just retired from the Kerala State Electricity Board draws is more than what a General Manager who retired 15 years ago does. This is sad, but true. 

The plea for not revising bank pension is that the profitability of banks is low. Banks have been making huge profits year after year. These profits could have been much higher if subsidised lending to Public Sector Undertakings, Quasi-Government institutions, Corporations and Boards and write-offs of loans did not happen. It is paradoxical that the pension paid to retirees of these bodies is higher than that of the retirees from banks which sacrificed their income to keep these bodies afloat.

Sincerely, 

(S.G. Bhavnani)
-- Regards, 

S.G. Bhavnani
Contact No. +919540410341(M)