Protest: Retired RTA employees not paid pensions for 4 months

RAWALPINDI:

About 1,700 retired employees of Rawal Town Administration (RTA) have not been paid their pensions for the past four months.

The situation led to a protest by the employees and their families on Wednesday. As many as 150 people, including retired employees, women and children with representatives of the employees union, protested outside the RTA office in front of Gordon College. They burnt tyres and raised slogans against the city administrations and Rawal Town.

“I retired from the Rawalpindi Municipal Corporation fire department, which went defunct in 2001 after the devolution plan. I was being paid my pension by the newly formed RTA. But since May, they have not paid the pension. Even though the amount is less than Rs4,000 per month, it is necessary for me,” said Muhammad Ali, who was carrying an anti-government banner.

Pervaiz Chida, leading the protest, said, “We are not concerned with the problem [that the organisation is facing], we need our pensions, which is our right.”

According to an RTA official, the health dispensaries and municipal schools were given to the district government in 2001. Later in 2005, some other departments were handed over to the district government under the formulae that the pension of retired employees would be shared by the two administrations.

Rawal Town Municipal Officer (TMO) Mian Muhammad Akram said his administration had regularly been paying its share to the City District Government (CDG) for pensions and the problem was on the part of the district administration.

The TMO said that in a recent meeting chaired by secretary local government in Lahore, it was decided that the Rawalpindi CDG would pay the pensions of retired employees after their departments were absorbed by the district administration.

However CDG officials said that since 2008, they have been paying pensions amounting to Rs8.5 million per month, while Rs1.5 million was paid by RTA.

The CDG had been facing a deficit of Rs6 million every month. By April this year, it became unable to pay the pensions and stopped payments, while the district government was not in a position to bear the deficit.

Finance Executive District Officer (EDO) Saqib Manan said that the CDG was not in a position to immediately pay the pensions, but he said that they had assured the pensioners of starting the payments by the end of this month.

The EDO said the district administration was going to send a summary to the local government secretary to appoint a senior officer to audit the RTA’s pension account, as they suspected some irregularities in the account.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2011.