Jumbangla Desk: To attract people to universal pension, a one-time amount will be given as gratuity from the age of 60 beyond the monthly pension benefits. The National Pension Authority has started analyzing how much the monthly pension can be reduced in the case of one-time payment of gratuity to the pensioners. Apart from this, health insurance benefits are being included under the universal pension system. If this is the case, all those who will be covered by the public pension system will get the benefit of health insurance.

On October 14, Chairman of the Pension Board of Directors and Finance Advisor. These decisions have been taken to popularize the system by analyzing the universal pension system in a meeting held under the chairmanship of Salehuddin Ahmed.

The public pension system in neighboring India provides a one-time payment of gratuity in addition to monthly pension benefits to citizens who reach pensionable age. Although a universal pension system was introduced in Bangladesh on the model of India, the previous government did not provide a lump sum payment to the pensioners apart from gratuity benefits or monthly pension benefits.

Government employees in the country get monthly pension as well as gratuity benefits. An employee gets two gratuities for each year of his service. In this case the amount of each gratuity shall be equal to his last basic salary. The Labor Act also provides for payment of gratuity.

Member of the National Pension Authority. Gholam Mostafa told Samakal that adding gratuity is being explored to make the public pension system more popular. Many countries, including India, have provisions for payment of one-time gratuity. Many countries do not have a gratuity system in the contributory pension system.

He said, adding the provision of one-time gratuity will reduce the amount of monthly pension. Since public pensioners have no basic salary, they have to pay a portion of their deposited contributions as one-time gratuity.

An examination of how gratuity is being paid in other countries will be presented to the Advisory Council meeting with the consent of the Finance Adviser. A provision for payment of one time gratuity will be added if the Advisory Council agrees. However, the decision regarding the one-time payment of gratuity has not been finalized yet.

Interest rates in the country's public pension system are also very low. While the general provident fund of government employees has an interest rate of 13 per cent and savings bonds of more than 11 per cent, the public pension scheme has been pegged at just 8 per cent. It has been decided to pay interest at this rate for the last financial year to those who have contributed to the public pension system.

On August 17, 2023, the government launched the universal pension system with four schemes. Although the government tried to promote the issue, the schemes failed to attract people in the last 14 months. So far 3 lakh 72 thousand 378 people have registered in all the schemes. Out of this only 2 lakh 85 thousand 884 registered in Samata scheme.

Although the public pension system was introduced mainly to attract expatriates and private sector workers, the schemes are not able to attract them. The number of registrants in the three schemes launched for expatriates and those employed in the private sector is only 86,494. Many of them stop paying installments after one or two months.

The government policy makers of the time hoped that the public pension system would attract huge expatriate interest. But the enrollment rate in the expatriation scheme is disappointing. Only 910 expatriates have been included in the scheme in the last 14 months.

22 thousand 410 people have registered under Pragati scheme for private sector employees and 63 thousand 174 people have registered under Suraksha scheme for people working in informal sector or self-employed.

Samata Scheme is for the super poor. The monthly subscription amount of the participants in this scheme is 1 thousand rupees, of which the registrant pays 500 rupees and the government pays 500 rupees. Even if it is for the very poor, others are also joining in the greed of getting a subsidy of 500 taka per month from the government.

Sources from the Ministry of Finance and Pension Authority have informed that the list of registrants in the Samata scheme will be verified. Among these, those who are not ultra-poor or are considered ineligible for joining the scheme, will be taken out of the equality scheme and transferred to another scheme.