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Wednesday, 9 April 2014 00:42 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Disapproving the Government’s violation of privileges for public servants to receive a property loan granted only once throughout their careers, in order to buy a house or a piece of land Amaratunga said: “In granting this loan previously the Government offered them an amount equal to five years salary and charged only an interest o around 4%. However, the public servants have faced many difficulties in the present move to grant that loan through banks, and now the receiver of the loan has become helpless, burdened by many conditions imposed by the banks in releasing those loans.
“When the public servants who have already paid the full loan back to the bank ask for their property deed which was kept as a security, the banks refuse to release it claiming that the amount to be paid by the Government as interest has not been fully settled and ask them to settle that amount too if they want their deeds back.
“By Pension Circular No. 04/2014, the Government has now implemented a very unfair system of backing out of responsibility by introducing a method of also paying pension gratuities of public servant’s through the banks in the same way it transferred the burden of property loans to the banks. The hitherto continued practice was to grant this gratuity by the Pensions Department and recover it in 10 years. Even then the amount recovered was only 60% of the gratuity granted. But, the newly introduced system of recovering the full amount of the gratuity through the banks amounts to an outright exploitation of the public servant,” he said.
According to Amaratunge, the new methodology has entirely withdrawn all the privileges granted to the public servants by Circular No. 44/90 introduced by the United National Party government, and the gratuity payments of some 15,000 pensioners have been held back for the past period of about one year.
“In the same way that it is scheduled to pay the arrears of the gratuity through the banks, why cannot the same amount be paid by transferring it to the Pensions Department? Will not the method of paying pensions gratuity through an alternative banking system instead of expediting and making more efficient the payment of the same through the Pensions Department, make the payment of that gratuity totally dysfunctional? What is the reason behind the Government not coming forward to bear 40% of the pension gratuity as was the practice continued hitherto? Is this yet another step, on the part of the Government that neglects its duty and responsibility towards the pensioners, in the process of mortgaging the public servants to the banks?” he asked.
The Government is expected to respond tomorrow (10).
