Coimbatore: Retired employees of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) staged a protest in front of the TNSTC office on Mettupalayam Road on Saturday, demanding immediate disbursal of retirement benefits.
G Palanisamy, president, TNSTC Retired Employees’ Welfare Association, said, “It is only after a long struggle that the state government has sanctioned Rs 172 crore as retirement benefits for the employees who had retired during April-December 2019. But the employees who had retired after that until April 2020, when the government increased the retirement age to 59 years, and other employees who had taken voluntary retirement till date have not received any of the benefits.”
Pointing out that the benefits are often delayed and received only after holding multiple talks with the government, he says lack of sufficient fund is often cited as a reason for the delay.
There are more than 86,000 retired TNSTC employees, 8,700 of them from Coimbatore, in the state. While most of them receive pension amount on time, Palanisamy said they had not received dearness allowance for the past 63 months since November 2015. “Many of them have also not received arrears of family pension amount.”