Aggressive action requested from SAIL /SAIL units to get Higher Pension under EPS 95

 By e-mail: chairman.sail@sail.in

FORSE/SAIL-C/0125

03/01/2025

To

Sri Amarendu Prakash,

Chairman,

Steel Authority of India Ltd,

Ispat Bhavan, Lodhi Road, 

New Delhi – 110 003.

Sub: Aggressive action requested from SAIL /SAIL units to get DLs from EPFO offices for Higher Pension.

Dear Sir,

This is to bring to your kind notice that in light of and as a consequence to the Hon’ble Supreme Court order dated 4^th November, 2022 a large numger of retired and existing employees of SAIL units had exercised the joint option with the employer i.e. the concerned SAIL Unit for consideration of Pension based on higher wages. The Joint option applications were mostly sent Online to the concerned regional offices of the Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in 2023.

On following up with the SAIL units as well as the concerned office of EPFO it is learnt by the concerned FORSE affiliated Unit Associations as also by the individual pensioners, that the processing of the individual joint option applications are at different stages in different units. As a result DLs are being issued only in the tens and twenties or at the most in hundreds when Applicants in some of the Units run in thousands. This implies that scrutiny on their part is still not over. Moreover, there is no other way the applicants, mostly the retired persons of SAIL, can know the status than to ask their concerned unit's Finance personnel of the same. Our year long experience in this matter gathered from other PSUs and also SAIL plants shows a pattern that EPFO asks for document after document from the Exempted trusts on the one hand and a just compliance of the same by the trusts on the other hand completes a never ending cycle. The wait of a retired person thus just goes on endlessly as there is nothing that he or she can do having filled up the application long back. It is in this context that we feel our employer, SAIL/ SAIL units should take up the matter with the Head Office of the  EPFO in Delhi and also at the unit level with the concerned regional offices to expedite completion of scrutiny and get the concerned EPFO to start sending the Demand letters to the applicants.

It is strongly felt that SAIL, as an employer, has a serious role to play in expediting issuance of Demand letters by the EPFO and should not rest till this aim has been achieved. For this purpose SAIL units may initiate holding periodic meetings with the concerned regional EPFO.  If so required, members of our concerned Unit Associations, on behalf of the mainstakeholders, the retired and joint applicants, shall be willing to cooperate with all concerned till the objective is achieved. Since the matter is getting delayed without any seemingly validreasons, your kind intervention is highly solicited to protect the interest of the retired employees who are otherwise being denied the fruits of their much needed enhanced pension.

With kind regards,  

Yours faithfully,

For and on behalf of Federation of Retired SAIL Employees

Dr V N Sharma Chairman

Ram Agar Singh  General Secretary