KOCHI: One month after Supreme Court gave the verdict, there is still no clarity in the Employees Provident Fund Pension. According to the court verdict on 4th November, those who retired before September 1, 2014, and gave option for higher pension the time to join the new scheme is eight weeks. For those who retired after that and for those who are still working the is four months.

The Central Government and the EPF Organization have not given any guidelines regarding this. Therefore, the pension beneficiaries are still confused and are not able to join the new scheme.

Majority of those who protested for decades to increase PF pension in tandem with their salary have retired before September 1, 2014. If these people are to get any benefits from SC’s verdict the EPFO must publish their guidelines. Those who are getting higher pensions after court intervention, fear that the amount they receive will go down.

The Provident Fund Pensioners Association took out a Parliamentary march accusing the SC’ verdict for being anti-labour and highly biased. The central government amendment that pension must be decided by taking the average of last 60 months salary was upheld by a verdict by the SC. The association says that this action by the SC is not justifiable.

Another demand is that the minimum pension must be Rs.9000 and DA as country’s every trade unions have decided upon Rs.18,000 as salary. The pensioners will get higher pension whenever the government revises the salary of the officials.

There are 73 lakh EPF pension beneficiaries in the country. In that 20 lakh persons are not getting Rs.1000 as pension. Citing these issues, representatives from 17 states will conduct a convention at Ram Lila Maidan in Delhi and will organize a Parliament march tomorrow. There will be 200 representatives from Kerala.