People's Democracy
(Weekly
Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 51
December 18, 2005
(Weekly
Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
|
Vol.
XXIX
No. 51 December 18, 2005 |
EPF RATE CUT
PROTEST DAY ON DEC 20
The eight central trade unions – CITU, AITUC, AICCTU, BMS, HMS, TUCC, UTUC and UTUC-LS – jointly issued the following statement on December 12, 2005.
THE union minister of labour, ignoring the unanimous plea of employees representatives in the Central Board of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund for maintaining the interest rate at 9.5 per cent, had unilaterally announced a further reduction in the rate to 8.5 per cent. All trade union leaders raised the issue before the prime minister at the recently held Indian Labour conference. The prime minister vaguely assured to look into the issue in consultation with the labour minister. But the stand of the finance minister, subsequently endorsed by the prime minister, that it is for the EPF organisation to find resources for paying the interest, is nothing but a bald rejection of the demand to restore the 9.5 per cent interest rate. The resources of the EPFO have been depleted by the arbitrary reduction of the administered rate of interest and lowering of interest rate on central government securities. Hence, the finance ministry should accede to the unanimous recommendations by the CBT, EPF to enhance the rate of interest on Special Deposit Scheme (SDS), where over 80 per cent of EPF corpus stand invested, enabling the EPFO to maintain the interest rate at 9.5 per cent.
In pursuance of this demand and to protest the move to reduce the interest rate on EPF, we call upon all sections of workers to observe an All India Protest Day on December 20, 2005 by staging massive rallies, demonstrations etc.
Besides, all trade unions shall send the following telegram to the prime minister:
"PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA, SOUTH BLOCK, NEW DELHI 110 001
REQUEST URGENT INTERVENTION TO MAINTAIN EPF INTEREST RATE AT 9.5 PER CETNT………………..". (Fax No 011 - 2301 6857)
The signatories to the statement were Chittabrata Majumdar (CITU), Swapan Mukherjee (AICCTU), D L Sachdev (AITUC), Girish Awasthi (BMS), A D Nagapal (HMS), G Devarjan (TUCC), Aboni Roy (UTUC) and Krishna Chakraborti (UTUC-LS)
