HAVING worked at the Employees’ Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) for a long time, I tend to agree with the letter “Old-Age ‘benefits’ or ‘hardships’?” (June 27), and wish to present the true picture of today’s EOBI before the pensioners. It is a tripartite institution consisting of three stakeholders; the government, the employers and the employees.

The main reasons behind the poor performance and maladministration is the government policy of continuously ignoring the EOBI despite repeatedly talking about improving the lot of the pensioners.

Subsequent governments have repeatedly increased the EOBI pension amounts for political mileage, but they do this without restoring the ‘matching grant’, which represents the government’s share in the EOBI fund, which was stopped way back in 1995. As a result, the EOBI pension fund has been severely affected.

Around 16 members of EOBI’s tripartite Board of Trustees (BoT) have completed their tenure and despite the approval of the federal cabinet regarding the formation of a new BoT, the new board has not been formed due to the negligence of the ministry concerned. Similarly, EOBI’s agreement with its pension disbursement banking partner, Bank Alfalah, ended in August 2020, but it has been extended without due process for another year. Due to the nexus between the two managements, pensioners are facing difficulties in terms of new ATM cards, biometric verification and timely payment of pension.

The former EOBI chairman, who allegedly submitted a manipulated actuarial valuation report to increase the pension amount on which the office of the auditor-general has taken a serious notice, retired several months ago, but a new chairman has not been appointed yet.

The EOBI is run as an inherited institution, where some individuals are illegally appointed or sent on deputation to hold key posts even though they happen to be non-cadre officials. The whole system is managed on an ad hoc basis by these officials who have taken the institution hostage, turning it from Employees’ Old-Age Benefits Institution into Elite Officers’ Benefits Institution.

Although the EOBI is bound to approve every pension case within 45 days as per the prescribed procedure, millions of aged, disabled and widow pensioners face hardships due to lack of empathy, care and respect for the elderly.

There is an urgent need for high-level intervention to transform EOBI into a transparent, corruption-free, pensioner-friendly institution.

Israr Ayoubi

Karachi

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THIS is with reference to the letter ‘A practical advice to EOBI pensioners’ (July 6) which encouraged people to call the helpline after midnight in order to get things moving. Following the advice, I skipped my sleeping hours in the hope of getting in touch with the Bank Alfalah helpline. No luck!

I started making calls on the stroke of midnight and kept doing it on the hour throughout the night, but all I got to hear was electronic voices telling me to wait for “one minute” or “three minutes” so that the call could be contacted to the relevant officer who, I was told, was busy attending other customers. My wait never ended. Every time I called, I was told that my number in the queue was “zero”.

This month I have not received the routine message for the credit of my EOBI pension. I personally visited the ATM, and saw the screen showing ‘funds not available’ message. It will be nice if the bank management could tell us where to go for getting things sorted out.

M. Maruf Athar

Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2021