GATHERING DATA OF RETIREES AND FAMILY PENSIONERS

GATHERING DATA OF RETIREES AND FAMILY PENSIONERS

 

Many a time we are faced with a situation to either make a strong case for our demands before the LIC Management or tell before the court during the hearings how a substantial number of retirees/pensioners are deprived of some benefits legally and legitimately due to them.For example we have been fighting a case in Supreme Court which started with DR anomaly from 1/8/1997 for those employees  who retired before that date.With successive wage revisions , the loss for the first  two groups of retirees has aggravated and problem of pension disparity has occurred for all generations of pensioners belonging to the retirement periods upto 31/7/2017.Now  the problem of anomaly and pension disparity persists with many retirees and also family pensioners having died so far without any justice having been done to them despite some partial relief provided by the Delhi High Court in its judgment dated 27/4/2017 ,of course in an arbitrary band segmented manner.According to Mr R B Kishore ,16500 pensioners have died so far without receiving justice. This is an important statistic that needs to be authentically submitted before the Supreme Court to strike an emotional chord so that the Apex Court can get convinced on how valuable lives are lost without getting due benefits in time.  But  unfortunately we do not have any authentic document to show how many retirees and family pensioners have died from 1/8/1997 during the five year periods between each wage revision and the aggregate deaths upto date.

When we apply under RTI Act to obtain such information, more often than not the information is not provided by LIC as the Central Office does not compile All India data for the sake of replying to a RTI query.Normally such information will be compiled by LIC only if is asked for by a court or by the Ministry of Finance for answering a Parliamentary question to be answered by  the Finance Minister.

LIC is only able to give the statistics of pensioners ( including family pensioners) as at the end of a financial year when asked for under RTI.

So,in my view,it is essential that all the Pensioners' Associations should build  up data on pensioners relating to their memberships  and update the same so that if we want to estimate for the Corporation as a whole as per some categorization,we can estimate  the same with reasonable accuracy to arrive at the required statistics for appropriate use for our legal cases in the absence of authentic figures  being provided by LIC.The Association/ Federation  with  maximum strength of pensioners will be able to collect more credible information which will help in estimating the total figure of the LIC for any purpose.Such information can also be shared among the pensioners' blogs for information of the blog visitors.

My suggestion is that each Federation like AIRIEF and Federation of Retired LIC Class I Officers' Associations can collect  the statistics of retirees and family pensioners who died during the various periods in relation to their total membership enrolled from all their affiliated units.Based on the percentage of deaths to total pensioners as at the end of the various periods,we can reasonably arrive at an accurate estimate of total deaths of pensioners for LIC as a whole.Federations having composite memberships of all classes of employees  can also compile class-wise data on pensioners and deaths among pensioners.

Now ,during the past over a year and a quarter when the Covid-19 pandemic ,it has become imperative for pensioners' bodies to have data of their members who died due to Covid virus infection.LIC Chairman in his recent address in a webinar sponsored by LUGI( Life Underwriters Guild of India) disclosed that about 500 employees of the Corporation died due to Covid-19 fatality.He also gave statistics of policyholders who died of Covid-19.But there was no mention of number of pensioners who died due to the pandemic as obviously the data might not have been gathered or available.But my hunch is that at least 1000 pensioners might have died  as the average age of pensioners is more and there is also a possibility of co-morbidities among pensioners.I therefore feel that the Federations/Associations should also collect the data on deaths of pensioners due to normal causes and deaths due to Covid-19 so that it will be possible to estimate the incidence of extra-mortality caused by the pandemic.I am of the strong conviction that there is a sudden reduction  of duration of  receipt of pension in the case of those who died due to Covid-19 and Pensioners' bodies should demand ex gratia lump sum relief to the families of such deceased pensioners.But this requires a credible data to convince the LIC Management of the need for such compensation.

In other words all relevant data in terms of figures  about pensioners who are members of the various  pensioners' Associations/Federations should be built up ( if not done so far) and shared among the fraternity of LIC pensioners through the pensioners' blogs in common interest of LIC Pensioners.

 The Retired LIC Class I Officers' Association of Hyderabad,is a small Association with limited scope for data and  out of about 280 members,we found that six members died  due to the pandemic.So I thought I should share the above thoughts with my pensioner friends.

Let us hope ,this way some justice is secured and meted out to families of Covid-19 victims among pensioners.

C H Mahadevan