CIRCULAR 28th August 2018
Dear Friends,
Our Governor called the United Forum for discussion on 24th August 2018 at 4 P.M. in Mumbai. United Forum was represented by Sarvashri Samir Ghosh, Ajit Subhedar, S. V. Mahadik, Arun Samaddar, Keshav Jagtap, C. M. Paulsil, Ajay Sinha and M. Rajkumar. Governor was accompanied by Deputy Governors Shri N. S. Viswanathan, Dr. V. V. Acharya, and Sri M. K. Jain.
Governor said he was feeling "sad" at our decision of consecutive two days' Mass Casual Leave (MCL) on 4th and 5th September 2018. When the international financial situation is in turmoil and Indian economy is facing challenges, the staff of the Central Bank of the country going on "two days leave" will affect the prestige of RBI, both nationally and internationally. He will also lose all "moral ground" to pursue these issues in the Board as well as with the Ministry of Finance. He also said right from 2000, RBI pensioners did not get anything for relief from earlier managements; only after his efforts, improvements in medical benefit in the form of Group Insurance for OPD treatment for pensioners has commenced. But hardly "within few months thereof, you have decided to go on MCL". He said he had been pursuing our issues with the Ministry of Finance, has written once again on 8th instant, and he requested us to reconsider our call.
In response, we said that we were equally sad, if not more, that we have been constrained to decide on two days' Mass Casual Leave programme. We have been pursuing the pension related issues for last one decade and we are thankful that RBI Central Board and successive Governor(s) have taken up the matter with the Government. We expressed our gratitude to Dr. Urjit Patel for writing elaborately to the Ministry of Finance on 9th October 2017 recommending one more option to CPF retainers and improvement of pension, which has been curtly refused by the Government, and that we consider as an affront to the high and exalted office of RBI Governor. We have said RBI staff are responsible enough to their duties and we told the Governor that during demonetization period entire RBI staff were fully engaged in the gigantic task of withdrawal of SBNs and remonetisation for 15 months, we did not agitate at all even though the issues remained unresolved.
When we referred to recent updation of pension to University Professors and non-teaching staff of UGC sponsored universities, Governor observed that this might be "sector-specific" to which we responded that when pension was introduced in RBI on the line of Central Govemment pension scheme, it followed automatically that any improvement in the CGPS will be extended to RBI pensioners and this was assured by the then Governor Shri R. N. Malhotra which is also on record. Now the Government cannot change its stance at its sweet will on the puerile argument of "contagion effect". We also told that the Minister of State for Finance has contradicted the stance of the contagion by stating on the floor of Rajya Sabha that the pension schemes of the PSBs were based on their corpus and was, therefore, different. We also told that the Bank should consider extending CPF to the NPS Optees as the same was extended to the NPS Optees in some of the banks.
We categorically stated that our agitation was not against the Governor, the Central Board or the Bank management, but against the bureaucracy which has refused to see reason and created a situation of extreme turmoil in RBI. We also pointed out how RBI's communication(s) to the Government on pension and P.F. regulations remain unresponded for long till now, showing how the Government views the RBI with scant regard.
We also pointed out the drawbacks in the Bank's recently introduced OPD scheme for pensioners to which Governor said Bank would sort out the administrative issues. Thus, the meeting ended without any firm commitment from the Bank.
Friends, we had to decide on the intensified agitation as we have no alternative. Whether in matters specific to RBI, the RBI Governor and the Central Board will have the decisive say or the Ministry of Finance bureaucrats will ride roughshod — that is the central issue to be decided by our struggle.
Let us march forward, shoulder to shoulder, to cent per cent success of our programme.
With greetings,
Yours fraternally,
(Suryakant Mahadik) (Keshav Jagtap) (Ajoy Kumar Sinha)
Generat Secretary General Secretary General Secretary
AIRBWF AIRBOA RBIOA
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