Employees’ unions press management

Employees’ unions of Rastriya Beema Sansthan (RBS) are pressuring its management to make available the “prize allowance” after it was discontinued this year following a directive of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA). On Sunday, a delegation of the unions met RBS Administrator Ram Bahadur Khadka, asking the management to respond to the demands within Monday. The employees have been enjoying the facility for the last two decades. The then CPN-UML-led minority government had introduced such a facility in the budget. Terming the facility illegal on ground that the allowance was being given to all employees instead of the best performers, the CIAA had directed the RBS to recover more than Rs 80 million distributed until 2008 from incumbent and retired employees. The amount to be recovered has reached more than Rs 100 million, according to RBS. Khadka said the employees have been asking to find ways to make available the allowance which they have been enjoying for a long. “I have told them that I would put the matter at the board meeting,” he said. An RBS source said the employees are likely to block the RBS’s attempt to split the institution into two bodies — one looking after life insurance and another into non-life businesses.“They have hinted that splitting the RBS and assurance of continuation of prize allowance should go simultaneously,” the source said. “They have also warned of another round of strike if their demands are not addressed within the next few days.” However, the unions said that they have no plans of staging strike at least until the Constituent Assembly election. “We have signed a deal with the management and committed not to hold strike in the near future after we were assured of the fulfillment of many our demands by the Finance Ministry too,” said Tulak Prasad Dhungana, central committee member of the RBS Employees’ Union. He, however, admitted that the unions have requested the management to make arrangement for making available the facility being enjoyed for several years in whatever way possible even if it cannot be provided under current heading. The RBS used to provide the “prize allowance” to the employees ahead of every Dashain. But the management failed to distribute the amount this year after it received letters from both the CIAA and the Finance Ministry against the facility. A board meeting of the RBS on November 1, 2010, had decided to provide the facility in the range of Rs 24,000 to lower-level employees and Rs 28,000 to officerlevel employees. The average prize money the 160 employees of the RBS receive is Rs 4.1 million a year. Putting forward various demands, including the continuation of the prize money, the RBS unions had stopped its administrator from entering into his office for two and half months. Only after the latest agreement, he was allowed to do resume his work just a month ago. rbs prize allowance row Rastriya Beema Sansthan building.