Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, April 24—It might be another silent revolution in Bengal. After a success in land reform measures, the state government has tied up with the UTI Mutual Fund to bring the unorganised workers under the umbrella of pension schemes.
Though there will be no official announcement of this decision because on the ensuing parliamentary polls, the government has entrusted the job of carrying out this work with a private organisation— Coopers Wealth Creators to carry out this in association with the UTI Mutual Fund. And to regain the lost grounds in villages—the base of Left Front movement in 70’s—the work will be carried out with a special thrust on Bengal districts.
According to the CEO of the company, Tamal Mukherjee, one in every six people over the age of 60 in the world lives in India. A majority of the eight crore elderly however do not receive a pension—either from the government or from their employers. Traditionally, most of them have depended on the joint family system and support from children when they stop working. But with the changing social structure, children are often forced to migrate when they start earning and as a result, nearly two in every three households is a nuclear household in Bengal.
For the government, this is a very serious social and fiscal concern. Within the next few years, the problems of dealing with poverty are likely to be overshadowed by the problem of dealing with poverty among the elderly. “Especially since current population of eight crore elderly is going to witness rapid growth and we are likely to have nearly 20 crore elderly people within the next two decades. The plight of our current aged is partly driven by our labour market structures. Of the 36 crore paid workers in the country, there is only 11 per cent organised sector workers, including government servants and salaried employees in large private firms, enjoy pension rights and benefits,” the CEO added.
However, most of state's workforce is employed in the unorganised sector and has been traditionally excluded from formal pension and provident fund arrangements. These include self-employed workers like farmers, farm labourers, self-employed women, contract and casual labour and small retailers. If these workers do not have access to any formal pension scheme, many of them will have no option but to continue to work throughout their lives.
The farmers, bidi workers, workers in chemical factories, brick kilns, jute mills, tea garden and even the agents of private insurance companies will have this facility. As there is no specific pay structure for the employees of these industries, Coopers Wealth Creators will help them depositing only eight per cent of their total daily earnings and that money will be deposited with the UTI Mutual Fund till the age of 58 years. “From now on, depending upon his savings, an unorganised sector worker will be getting pension at least 10 per cent of the total amount from the age 59 till he lives,” the CEO said.
UTI-Retirement Benefit Pension Fund is an open-end tax saving-cum-pension fund. The scheme has been notified by Central Government in the Gazette Notification dated November 3, 2005 as a Pension Fund eligible under sub-section (2), clause (xiv) of section 80C of Income- tax Act, 1961 for assessment year 2006-07 and subsequent assessment years. The investment objective of the scheme is to primarily provide pension in the form of periodical income or cash flow to the members to the extent of redemption value of their holding after they attain the age of 58 years. The scheme invests minimum 60 per cent and maximum 100per cent in debt and balance in equity.
EOM
santanu_saraswati@hotmail.com
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