THE annual budget for 2016-17 is now being finalised by the finance ministry. Special attention is being paid to the salaries of government employees, and pensions of its retirees. Here I would like to draw the finance minister’s attention to the National Bank of Pakistan’s management which has stopped annual increment to its pensioners for the past six years. Every year, more than 8,000 pensioners desperately wait for an increase in their pension, yet their expectations are never fulfilled. This attitude of the bank is not quite clear.

The pension amount of the poor and aged retirees is frozen at its initial stage. This has landed the retirees in a miserable financial situation, particularly those pensioners who retired between 1999 and 2003 and suffered badly on account of the rigid retirement policies of the bank at the time.

Previous records show that the bank had hardly granted an increase in pensions after a break of two to three years.

The National Bank of Pakistan is an autonomous body of the federal government, and all its affairs are administered by the finance department — but the poor and aged retirees are deprived of annual increase of pension funds, along with other retired government employees.

We, the bank retirees, appeal to the finance minister to look into the matter and direct the bank to release all the annual increases, withheld for the past many years, before the announcement of the forthcoming budget.

Mahmood Ahmad Minhas
Lahore

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2016