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Journalism of Courage
Over the last few months, the issue of pension for Central government employees has become a hot potato with Congress vowing to implement the same if voted back to power.
In Pune Zilla Parishad, a test audit by the Accountant General (AG) of Maharashtra has found out that a total of 47 employees had their pension amount deducted but not credited into their Pension Fund (PF) account. For employees, this amounts to loss of interest, and for the, government an increase in liabilities.
The incident came to light when the AG conducted its audit for the Zilla Parishad for the years 2019-2020, and 2021-2022. A copy of the audit report along with its observations was made available to The Indian Express under the RTI Act , 2005.
The pension scheme sees the Zilla Parishad deducting 10 per cent from the salary of the employee and matching the same from its funds. The consolidated amount is then transferred to the National Security Depository Limited (NSDL) /Trustee Bank. The Zilla Parishad’s Chief Accounts and Finance Officer (CAFO) is responsible for the process and has to facilitate the process within five days of the amount being deducted from the employee’s account.
However, during the course of the audit, the AG came across Rs 12.68 crores, which was deducted from the salaries of the employees but was not transferred to the NSDL. “The un-transferred amount was due to non-issuing of Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN),” the report read.
PRAN is the unique number allocated to employees, which is used to transfer the combined amount to NSDL, which releases the pension fund for the employee. The audit revealed that 47 employees did not have their PRAN generated, yet a portion of their salaries towards pension was deducted. Thus, for employees, it amounts to loss of pay due to deduction as well as loss of interest due to failure of the Zilla Parishad to transfer the amount to the pension fund.
Sandeep Choudhary, union leader of the Zilla Parishad Employees, after this problem came to their notice, they immediately brought it to the notice of the administration. “Deducting the pension amount from the salary and not crediting it to the NSDL account amounts to breach of objective,” he said.
Choudhary said they have not seen proactive efforts on the part of the administration to resolve the matter. During the audit, the AG attributed the non-generation of PRAN to technical issues. “This reply is not acceptable and the fact remains that the amount is yet to be transferred to NSDL,” the AG had noted.
When The Indian Express reached out to the Zilla Parishad for its response, the administration said the matter is close to being resolved. “The PRAN of 33 employees were to be generated and the matter was delayed due to inter-district transfer of employees,” said the reply.
