Representatives of All Pensioners Retired Persons Association staged a protest, as part of the nation-wide protests being organised every year on November 16 as ‘black day’ against the imposition of the EPS 95 scheme, at the Regional PF Office at Marripalem, here, on Monday (November 17).
On the call given by the national and State committees, the Visakhapatnam district committee organised the protest on November 17 as November 16 happened to be a Sunday.
Pensioners of all government and private organisations participated in the protest. Addressing the gathering, the association’s State general secretary K. Sudhakar Rao said that though agitations were being conducted annually for the past 15 years against EPS 95, the Centre has not raised the minimum pension and was refusing to solve the problems of the pensioners.
The pensioners were unable to make both ends meet with the minimum pension of ₹1000. They were demanding increasing the minimum pension to at least ₹9000. District secretary Sk. Hussain sought that the minimum pension should be enhanced to ₹9000 and the DA should be linked with it. The retired employee and spouse should be provided medical facility, the higher pension facility should be extended to those who had retired before and after September 1, 2014 and the railway concession facility for senior citizens, which was discontinued on the plea of COVID-19 should be revived.
