THE premium for the group insurance is deducted from the salaries of government employees according to their pay scales. The group insurance is meant to cover the duration of life, but government employees in Sindh are being discriminated against in this regard. This benefit is denied to all civil servants in the province at the time of retirement as the State Life Insurance Corporation (SLIC) only entertains cases where an employee dies during the service or within five years after the retirement.

Some of the civil servants of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) had filed a civil petition before the Peshawar High Court on the same issue. The KP government then started refunding the amount of group insurance to all its employees at the time of their retirement.

Balochistan has also promulgated the Balochistan Provincial Employees Group Insurance Act, 2009, whereby all gover-nment employees have to be paid the amo-unt contributed towards group insurance at the time of their retirement. The same is the case in Punjab. The Sindh government for some reason has failed to follow suit. Some petitions on the subject were filed before the Sindh High Court in 2021 and 2022. The court decided that the relevant welfare board is the competent forum to redress the issue, therefore amendments in the relevant law — the Sindh Civil Servants Welfare Fund Ordinance, 1979 — be made.

On the directives of the court, the Sindh government constituted a committee for formulating recommendations, but the outcome is not known yet. As such, tho-usands of retired civil servants still await reimbursement of the amount against their contribution to group insurance.

Shams Jafrani
Karachi

Published in Dawn, October 23th, 2024