IT Sub-Committee Mulling to Increase Pensions for All PTCL Employees

The Sub-Committee of Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication (IT&T), on Tuesday, discussed the issue of payment increase in pension of the retired employees of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) payable by the Pakistan Telecommunication Employees Trust (PTET).

The meeting was held with Senator Engineer Rukhsana Zuberi as its convener and was attended among others by Senators Kalsoom Parveen, Abdul Rehman Malik, Joint Secretary IT&T, Managing Director PTCL.

The Committee discussed the matter and was surprised at the fact that the Board is not considering payment of pensions to those pensioners who did not approach the court and is interpreting the Supreme Court judgment as direction to make payments to only those pensioners who appealed in the court.

The Committee observed that all the retired employees have the same case and the situation cannot be interpreted differently. The PTET Board should not expect each of the pensioners to approach the courts individually to get relief.

The Committee was told that a total of 20,139 pensioners have to be made their payments and the present financial obligation is of 41.163 billion rupees with an additional impact of 41.265 billion rupees due to the 10% increase by the Government of Pakistan.

PTET was directed by the Committee to provide its business and investment rules, bank deposit details, the returns of investments from 2 properties on present market price, detail of PTCL contributions as per Act 1996, additional burden of payment on PTET after the VSS in 2008 and payments made to legal counsels in cases in next meeting. The Committee also directed to provide details of those 343 employees who have missed the benefits and any actions taken by PTET to reach out to them and directed to pay off the remaining pensioners from available funds.