Civil servants: Govt employees demand restoration of pension system

Threaten to boycott polio drive, duties at polling stations.

PESHAWAR: More than 30,000 employees, a majority belonging to the education sector, are at loggerheads with the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government for its silence on the issue of restoring the gratuity/pension system for regular employees. 

Instead of a pension system that was functioning earlier, the K-P government has a ‘Contributory Provident (CP) Fund’ in place for employees of the education and health departments, who were hired after July 1, 2001.

Official sources at the Civil Secretariat Peshawar, told The Express Tribune that the finance department has told the government that the increase in the number of government employees every year is burdensome and a pension restoration scheme would be unsustainable.

CP was approved in 2007 but has been in effect since July 2001 in K-P for health and education departments only. Under this system, a certain amount is deducted from both the employee’s salary and government exchequer and can be withdrawn all at once upon retirement. While in the earlier system, after retirement an employee not only gets lump sum money as gratuity on basic pay scale but also receives payment on a monthly basis thereafter as well.

“In case of implementation of the CP system, we were promised 150% increase in salaries. However, that promise was not fulfilled and the provincial government deprived us of our pensions as well,” said Professor Izaz Ali, president of the Pension Deprived Employees Association (PDEA), an organisation formed to contest the issue with the government.

“The CP fund calculation is a wild goose chase with complete ignorance of ground realties.”



PDEA vice-president Ziaullah said that contrary to the government’s claims to bring positive changes in education and health sectors, employees are subjected to a system they oppose.

PDEA Information Secretary Salim Nawaz said that thousands of affected employees would boycott participation in the upcoming polio vaccination drive if the government does not listen to their demands. “Teachers will not take part in the vaccination campaign either,” he said. The organisation is also planning to boycott election duties.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2013.