The Punjab Cabinet led by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann today gave approval to the notification for implementing the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) in the state thereby directly benefitting more than 1.75 lakh government employees.

A decision to this effect was taken in the meeting of the council of Ministers held under the leadership of the Chief Minister here at his office in the Punjab Civil Secretariat- I.

Disclosing this here today, a spokesperson of the Chief Minister’s Office said that the state government has approved the Old Pension Scheme for its employees currently covered under New Pension Scheme (NPS) thereby fulfilling a long pending demand of employees of the state. This will directly benefit more than 1.75 lakh Government employees currently covered under NPS. In addition to this, 1.26 lakh employees are already covered under the existing Old Pension Scheme.

The scheme is expected to benefit more than 4,100 employees in the next five years alone. The scheme is aimed at safeguarding the future of Government Employees and recognizing their immense contribution towards the State. In order to ensure that the scheme being introduced is financially sustainable for the exchequer in future also, the state government will be contributing proactively towards creation of a pension corpus which will service the pension in future to the beneficiaries of the scheme.

This contribution towards the pension corpus will be Rs 1,000 Crore per annum initially and will gradually increase in future. In addition to this, the current accumulated corpus with NPS is Rs 16,746 Crore for which the state government will request Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), Government of India to refund this amount for effective utilization at its end. The Cabinet reiterated its firm commitment that the scheme will be made self-sustainable from the resources available with the exchequer adding that under no circumstance, the future of employees’ will be jeopardized.