Budget 2023: Trade union demands restoration of old pension scheme in pre-budget meet with FM Nirmala Sitharaman

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chaired her 7th pre-budget consultation with the stakeholders of labour organizations, in New Delhi, on Monday. The representatives of the trade union demanded the restoration of the old pension scheme and expressed their strong disagreement against privatization.

The Indian Labor Union also registered their protest against the current policy of strategic sale of government companies taking place recently. Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh said this method of privatization is not acceptable and the government should reconsider it. 

The union said that a separate policy should be made for loss-making public service banks and accordingly a separate cadre should be formed for their management

They have also put up a demand to increase the minimum pension in employee provident funds (EPF) from Rs 1000 to Rs 5000. They also proposed to include the benefit of Ayushman Bharat. EPF pensioners should get the benefit of Ayushman Bharat and the premium should be paid by the government

Some of the other demands include an increase in the budget allocation of the Labor Welfare Scheme. 

Demanding the restoration of the old pension scheme, they said that a minimum pension should be guaranteed under National Pension Scheme (NPS) till the time the old pension scheme is restored.

The Finance Ministry has been conducting pre-budget meetings with leaders from different sectors for the past few days. Today is the last day of the pre-budget meetings.

More than 110 invitees representing 7 stakeholder groups participated in 8 meetings scheduled during this period. The stakeholder groups include representatives and experts from Agriculture and Agro Processing Industry; Industry, Infrastructure & Climate Change; Financial Sector Capital Markets; Services and Trade; Social Sector; Trade Unions and Labour Organisations, and Economists.

The representatives of the stakeholder groups made a number of suggestions for the forthcoming budget that included a mechanism for green certification to help MSMEs, an urban employment guarantee programme to boost employment generation in urban areas, rationalization of income tax, creation of innovation clusters, schemes for improving domestic supply chains,  reduction of taxes on the electric vehicle, the introduction of EV policy and many more.