People's Democracy

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued the following statement on August 10.

THE decision of the central government to effect a further reduction in the rate of interest on Provident Fund, from 9.5 per cent to 8.5 per cent is unacceptable. With the inflation rate going up there is no justification whatsoever for a reduction in the interest rates for EPF. Such a reduction will only harm the interests of the workers and erode their savings further.

It is also regrettable that departing from the earlier tradition of the CBT to take decisions only by way of consensus, this time a decision has been taken on the basis of a majority bypassing the protests of the representatives of the central trade unions.

It is unfortunate that the UPA government continues with the patently anti-worker policies of the previous NDA regime.

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) urges upon the central government to reconsider this decision and see that there is no reduction in the PF interest rate.

THE decision announced by the union minister of labour and chairman of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) to effect a further reduction in the rate of interest on Provident Fund, albeit as an interim measure, from 9.5 per cent to 8.5 per cent is totally unacceptable to the working people and the general trade union movement. The very fact that the labour minister, as part of his decision, had to urge the finance minister to consider raising the rate of interest on Special Deposit Scheme, where almost 80 per cent of the EPF corpus remains invested, taking into account the present inflationary spiral testifies to the genuineness of the demand for upward revision of the interest rate to 12 per cent – a unanimous demand of the entire spectrum of trade unions in the country. Evidently, the finance ministry had stayed the labour minister’s hands.

The UPA government was expected to undo the misdeeds of the previous NDA regime, which were patently anti-worker and anti-people. But the fact that the UPA regime has chosen not only to persist with the same policies of the previous NDA government but also to effect a further downward reduction of the interest rate on EPF, is only adding credence to the growing popular perception that there had only been a change in government but not a change in governance policies. With a runaway inflation reaching nearly 8 per cent, this reduction defies logic and reflects an anti-worker mindset.

The representatives of the CITU, AITUC, HMS and UTUC-LS conveyed to the chairman of the CBT that the decision was unacceptable and breached the cherished tradition of the CBT to take decisions only by way of consensus and not by majority. They had also recorded their dissent. Even the representatives of the BMS, which had gone along with the NDA regime in bringing down the interest rate on EPF from 12 to 9.5 per cent and that on the SDS from 12 to 8 per cent, joined the dissent.

Seven central trade union organisations viz. CITU, AITUC, HMS, AICCTU, TUCC, UTUC and UTUC-LS together with over 40 federations of employees and workers in different sectors have already announced their decision to observe an ‘All India Demands Day’ on August 20, 2004, on issues related to the budget announcements of the UPA government including the interest rate issue. The CITU calls upon all workers, irrespective of affiliations, to join the countrywide action programme in a massive manner to register their resentment over the unjustified reduction in interest rate of EPF and other issues of concern to the trade union movement. (INN)