All India coal pensioner dharna protest

Coal pensioners in large number from different places like Kolkata, Burdwan, Asansol, Durgapur, Dhanbad,  Varanasi, Bokaro, Patna, Bilaspur, Jamshedpur, and Baitul assembled at Dhanbad on 15/2/21 to protest against the indifferent attitude of the Coal Mines Provident Fund Organization (CMPFO)  in solving pensioners’  problems.

 All India Association of Coal Executives,(AIACE) and other pensioners organizations, under the banner of All India Coal Pensioners Association (AICPA), organized one-day Dharna peacefully before the CMPFO office, Dhanbad in which a  large no of pensioners and their family members including widows participated.

Main Dharna was held in front of CMPFO office Dhanbad from 10 am to 4 pm and simultaneously at  Regional offices of CMPFO at Ranchi, Bilaspur, Nagpur, Chhindwara,  Ramagundam, Kothagudem, Talcher, Jabalpur, Asansol and other places from 2 PM to  4 PM.  

Sri P K Singh Rathor, Convenor, All India Coal Pensioners Association, attended the dharna at Dhanbad along with  Dinkar Sahu(Baitul),  Sri   Pawan Tandon, G R Paul, Dr N G Mukherjee, Sri Ambika Chakrabarty from Asansol, Sri Sunil Roy (Durgapur), Sri M L Gandhi and S N Singh from Varanasi, Sri H K Choudhary  (Jamshedpur), Sri K Sasidharan (Patna) and others.

Sri M Z  Ali, General Secretary, All India Association of Coal Executives told that people participated in this dharna to raise a voice against injustice to them.

Sri P K Singh Rathor, Convenor, AICPA explained that this dharna was organized to protest against constant neglect of pensioners’ demands of simplification of process for commencing pension to widow/widower of deceased coal pensioner, and non-compliance of periodical review of CMPS 1998 and upward revision of pension stagnant since inception.

He further said that all coal employees in the Coal sector are covered under the Pension scheme called CMPS-1998 and after the death of a coal pensioner, the widow/widower is entitled to a pension for life.  The age-old rules of CMPFO ask them to personally visit the place of working of deceased pensioner and re-submit all those forms & papers which were already submitted by the deceased pensioner at the time of retirement. Visit to non-existing collieries by these aged and physically weak widows/widowers is a punishment for them and many a time they prefer to forgo pension. On the contrary, since 2013, various other central government Provident Fund organizations are allowing easy starting of widow/widower pension at the bank level itself where the deceased pensioner had the account. This simplified process, based on Aadhar identification, is demanded by coal pensioners. 

Sri Rathor further said that as per provisions, pension was to be reviewed every 3 years, it has never been revised since its inception 22 years.  The pension of retired coal mining industry employees is not getting enhanced despite several pay revisions of coal industry employees and the ever-increasing cost of living.

On this occasion,  AICPA submitted a memorandum to  Commissioner, CMPFO., Dhanbad. A similar memorandum was submitted to all regional Commissioners by respective branches of AICPA.

Dhanbad team of AICPA including  M Z Ali, K N Prasad, R M Prasad, Gaya Singh, K Suresh, D Chatterjee, B K Barnwal contributed to this well organized Dharana