CITU Flays EPF Rate Reduction Move

IN a press statement issued from New Delhi on May 23, the secretariat of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has strongly resented the proposal mooted by the finance & investment committee to further slash the interest rates on employees provident fund (EPF), in the name of making various projections of surplus/deficit. As forewarned by the CITU, the government of India has used the ploy of getting the EPF interest rate question examined by a committee, including experts, to force the rate reduction already announced by the finance minister, in his budget speech, on the 2.4 crore worker-subscribers of the EPF. The oft-repeated assertions of the present minister of labour, Sahib Singh Varma, that he was against any reduction in the present 9.5 per cent interest rate, have only turned to be dubious statements to mislead the gullible. If the minister was sincere to his public postures, he ought to have pursued the matter with the finance minister and the prime minister and prevailed upon them not to reduce the interest rate on the special deposits scheme, in which over 80 per cent of the EPF corpus stands invested. With the successive doses of reduction in the interest rate bringing it down from the earlier 12 per cent, the government is only seeking to grab around Rs 2,600 crore every year from the workers and use it for fiscal management.

The CITU statement also regretted the fact that presidents of the BMS and the INTUC, who are members of the panel that has proposed the reduction, have acquiesced with the government’s move despite their repeated declarations to stand by the demand of the entire trade union movement for restoration of the 12 per cent interest. It has now been laid bare that the grand design behind the present minister’s unprecedented move to keep the CITU and AITUC nominees out of the central board of trustees of the EPF was just to ensure a “smooth sail” for this reduction. It is regrettable that the government of India has chosen to turn a deaf ear to the united voice of the workers in the country, as manifested in the May 21 strike.

The CITU has urged upon the members of the central board of trustees to reject the proposal and urge the government to restore the original interest rate of 12 per cent, while continuing the present rate during the interregnum. The CITU has also asked the working class to remain vigilant and unitedly rise in resistance if the government persists with this patently anti-worker move. 

(INN)