Coal India Pension Scheme: Check latest news on non-payment of interest

Coal India Pension Scheme Latest News: An association of serving and retired executives of state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) has sought the government's intervention with regard to the long-pending issue of non-payment of interest due to delayed finalisation of the pension scheme of the PSU.

In a letter to the government, All India Association of Coal Executives (AIACE) Principal General Secretary P K Singh Rathor said, "Our association requests your kind intervention for speedy approval of payment of interest from January 1, 2007, at the compensatory interest rate, for delayed settlement of CIL Executive Defined Contribution Pension Scheme-2007 as superannuation benefits for both board level and below board level executives of CIL."

Around 10,000 executives have superannuated from the services of Coal India Ltd (CIL) from January 1, 2007, to March 31, 2020, he said, adding that unfortunately, a number of such retired executives have died during this period without availing the benefit and the interest component of this scheme.

Also, CIL and its subsidiary companies have not identified the nominees of many of the executives who died before the implementation of the scheme and as such their corpus fund is lying in suspense account with CIL/subsidiary companies.

"On our consistent follow up with the CIL management, the issue of payment of interest component...Was understood to be sent to the Ministry of Coal for necessary direction. The issue remains unresolved till now...Other PSUs have transferred the contribution to the accounts of the respective retirees immediately after implementation of the scheme, but, CIL has so far failed apparently for want of directive from government," Rathor said. "We are afraid that when the implementation of the scheme took a long 12 years, the decision on payment of interest may again take 12 years or more," he said.

The retired executives of CIL have suffered huge losses due to delay in implementation of the annuity scheme for various reasons like loss of interest for delay in formation of trust/fund and loss due to delay in start of payment of annuity.  The loss on account of non-payment of interest is roughly to the extent of 50 per cent of the annuity being paid to the retired executives.

As per the second pay revision of salary effective from January 1, 2007 for board and below board level executives of CPSE, 30 per cent of basic and Dearness Allowance (DA) was provisioned as superannuation benefit which includes PF deduction, provision for post retirement medical benefit, gratuity and 9.84 per cent as superannuation benefit(popularly known as NPS).