Pensioners seek PM’s help

LAHORE
The Punjab Pensioners Association (Registered) has pressed upon the Government of Pakistan to rectify the increase in pension and medical allowances and make them compatible with the increase in the salaries of serving civil servants.
In a letter sent to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and signed by the Association’s President Khalid Islam, the pensioners have submitted that it has been the convention of the government that increase in pay and pension of civil servants and retired personnel, respectively, were made equally but during the financial year 2010-11 in particular, equal increase was not granted resulting in great difference and incompatibility in pay and pension.
According to the Association, at that time, the salaries of the serving civil servants were increased up to 50 % of their pay as well as other fringe benefits viz house rent, medical conveyance allowance etc but great injustice was done with the pensioners and nominal increase at the rate of 15 to 20 percent of net pension was made in the pension.
In the letter, stress has also been laid on the basic matter of right as it has been submitted that it is equally well settled that pension, like the salaries of civil servants, is no longer a bounty but a right that accrues to the pensioners after they have put in satisfactory service for the prescribed minimum period. If the equally placed pensioners were not given equal/compatible increase it would tantamount to discrimination against the demands of justice, creating an anomalous situation attracting the well settled principle of law of equal right as guaranteed by the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Regretting that none of these senior citizens’ requests to this effect were heeded in the past due to their incapacity to agitate, protest or go on strikes, the pensioners have demanded that the government must rescue this old, ailing lot by rectifying/leveling the difference in the increase in pension as compared with the increase in pay made during the financial year 2010-11, retrospectively (i.e since then). They have also demanded enhancement in the medical allowances up to 50 % of the pension.