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Wednesday, Sep 29, 2004

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LIC employees to discuss wage revision

By Our Special Correspondent

CHANDIGARH, SEPT. 28 . A wage revision for employees of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) would be one of the main issues to be taken up at the three-day general conference of the Northern Zone Insurance Employees' Association (NZIEA) to be held here from tomorrow.

Addressing a press conference here today, R.P.Manchanda, a former president of the All-India Insurance employees' Association, and S. S. Kooner, president of NZIEA, said that the conference would be inaugurated by K. Venugopal, the AIIEA general secretary, and the local MP, Pawan Kumar Bansal, would be the chief guest.

They said that the wage revision for LIC employees was due since August 1, 2002.The employees were serving over 17 crore policyholders and the LIC had settled 99.86 per cent of the claims in the year 2003-04 but the ratio of salaries and benefits to employees to total premium income had declined from 9.52 per cent to 6.46 per cent in 2001-02 which had been reduced to 6.07 per cent in 2002-03 and 5.49 per cent in 2003-04.

They added that the UPA Government had assured through the National Common Minimum Programme that the public sector undertakings, which are operating in competitive environment and profit making and are not dependent on the Government for budgetary support would be given Functional Autonomy. The conference would urge the Government to settle the wage question of LIC employees at the earliest. The AIIEA has already called for a one-hour walk-out strike on October 7 and a two-hour walk-out strike on October 29. If no steps are taken by the authorities to resolve the issue through purposeful negotiations, then the employees will go on one-day strike in November, they asserted while stating that there was no justification in denying the LIC employees a handsome wage revision.

The conference would urge the UPA Government to abandon the move for increasing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in insurance, telecom and civil aviation sectors as these are in violation of the agenda drawn by the UPA and its allies. The increase in foreign equity in insurance wou1d enhance the ability of the private companies to manipulate and exploit the insurance market. It would also demand merger of the four public sector General Insurance Companies as per the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Undertakings so that the cut-throat competition within the public sector companies was avoided and they could compete more effectively with the private insurers in a competitive environment.

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LIC employees to discuss wage revision