Employees, covered under NPS, will be given UPS option by the government
PIONEER NEWS SERVICE | Dehradun
After the decision of the Uttarakhand government to implement the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) for its employees from April 1, the State government employees will be covered under three types of pensions, the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), the New Pension Scheme (NPS) and the newly introduced UPS.
There are about 1.50 lakh regular employees in the State government and out of them about one lakh employees are covered under the NPS. There are about 50,000 employees recruited prior to 2004 which are covered under the OPS. After the introduction of UPS, the employees thereto covered under the NPS will be given an option to switch to the UPS regime.
The employees covered under the OPS get 50 per cent of the last salary (Basic+ DA) as pension. They also get the benefit of Dearness Allowance (DA), family pension and commutation.
The New Pension Scheme (NPS) was started in the year 2004 by the Manmohan Singh government to reduce the ever increasing burden of pension on state exchequer. Under it a portion of the salary of the employees is deducted every month and the government makes an equal contribution. This is invested in different debt and equity instruments to build up a corpus for the employee and on his retirement he or she receives the pension from the interest incurred from the corpus.
The employees are finding the NPS non lucrative and are demanding the restoration of OPS. Under pressure from the employee organisations, the union government recently came out with the UPS as an option for the employees covered under the NPS.
The UPS offers a minimum assured pension to the employees on retirement. The UPS includes an assured pension of 50 per cent of average basic pay of the last year in service for employees with at least 25 years of service. It offers a family pension of 60 per cent to the last pension drawn by the pensioners to the spouse. The UPS has a provision of a minimum pension of Rs 10,000 per month for those with at least 10 years of service.
The employee associations however are not amused by the new pension proposal of the government.
The president of the Uttarakhand chapter of National Movement for the Old Pension Scheme (NMOPS), Jeetmani Painyuli said that there are many flaws in the UPS due to which the employees have rejected it. Painyuli said that the employees should be given an option to choose from OPS, NPS and UPS.
