ISLAMABAD: Khaqan Murtaza, Chairman, Employees Old Age Benefit Institution along with Director General Operations Abdul Wahid and Deputy Director General Syed Iqbal Haider Zaidi visited Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry and addressing the business community assured to address the issue of encroachments in I-8 Markaz due suspended EOBI projects so that traders of area could get rid of multiple problems. He said due to cases in court, work on EOBI projects in I-8 Markaz was on hold, but efforts were being made to resolve this issue through negotiations. He said about 18 projects of EOBI were suspended due to court cases and the department was suffering losses of millions of rupees.
He EOBI was providing pension to 40 million pensioners while 40,000 employees were being insured every year. He said if this trend continued, EOBI pensioners would touch the figure of 400 million in coming times. He said EOBI has taken steps to facilitate its beneficiaries and has issued ATM cards of Bank Al-Falah to 3 Lac 63 thousand pensioners so that they could draw pension through ATMs. He said EOBI has assets of over Rs.300 billion and it was making investments in PIBs and other safe instruments. He admitted that minimum pension of Rs.5250/month was quite insufficient, but added that pension case was in Supreme Court. He asked the business community to cooperate in registration of employees in EOBI so that maximum workers could take benefit of its pension.
Speaking at the occasion, Khalid Iqbal Malik, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that EOBI was paying minimum pension of only Rs.5250/month which was totally insufficient to meet even the minimum basic needs of life and urged that EOBI should enhance its minimum pension to at least Rs.10,000/- to ease the woes of its pensioners. He said government used to increase pension of its employees almost every year, but EOBI was giving raise in pension after a gap of many years. He said that EOBI should link increase in pension with annual inflation to provide better relief to its pensioners.
He said due to suspended projects of EOBI in I-8 Markaz, parking of the areas was occupied by construction material while footpaths, toilets and other infrastructure has been badly damaged due to which business activities were badly suffering. He said EOBI should remove its encroachments from I-8 Markaz to facilitate the traders.
He said EOBI’s online facilitation system was available only for five days from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm while FBR online system was available for 24 hours. He stressed that EOBI should further streamline its online facilitation system and make it available for 24 hours to facilitate the industrial and commercial establishments. Khalid Malik, Senior Vice President ICCI, Tariq Sadiq, Zafar Bakhtawari, Mian Akram Farid, Sanaullah Khan and others also spoke at the occasion.
