New Delhi: An association of serving and retired executives at state-run Coal India Limited (CIL) and Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) has urged Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi to intervene and expedite the payment of interest to CIL and SCCL retired employees and their dependents due to delayed finalisation of CIL Executive Defined Contribution Pension Scheme-2007. In a letter to Joshi, PK Singh Rathor, the Principal General Secretary of All India Association of Coal Executives (AIACE), said, "Under these circumstances, our association requests your kind intervention for speedy approval of payment of interest from 1st January, 2007 at the compensatory interest rate, for delayed settlement of CIL Executive Defined Contribution Pension Scheme-2007 as Superannuation Benefits for both Board Level and below Board Level Executives of CIL. This noble gesture from your end will go a long way in ensuring speedy justice to retired executives and their dependents."
"We are afraid that when the implementation of the scheme took a long 12 years, the decision on payment of Interest may again take 12 years or more," the letter said.
Elaborating on the loss caused to retired executives due to non-payment of interest, Rathor said, "It is to be noted that, retired executives of CIL have suffered huge losses due to delay in implementation of the Annuity Scheme for various reasons like (i) loss of interest for delay in formation of Trust / Fund; (ii) loss due to delay in start of payment of annuity and (iii) substantial drop in rate of annuity during this period of about ten years. It may also kindly be noted that the loss on account of non-payment of interest is roughly to the extent of 50 percent of the annuity being paid to the retired executives."
"We would also like to inform you that a total of around 10,000 executives have superannuated from the services of Coal India Limited during the period 1st January, 2007 to 31st March, 2020. Unfortunately, a number of such retired executives have died during this period without availing the benefit of scheme and also the interest component of this scheme. Also, CIL and its subsidiary companies have not identified the nominees of many of executives who died before implementation of the scheme and as such their corpus fund is lying in suspense account with CIL/subsidiary companies," the letter said.
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