People's Democracy

Employees Protest GIC Split Bill

INSURANCE employees received with a sense of shock the news that Lok Sabha had adopted the bill to split the public sector GIC and its subsidiaries on May 9. Quite recently, the Parliamentary Committee on Public Undertakings, headed by Professor Vijay Kumar Malhotra, had recommended the merger of GIC and its four subsidiaries into a single corporation. The parliament has bypassed its recommendations as well as the recommendations of management consultancy firms like the Chitale & Co and the Waterhouse Coopers, appointed by the GIC of India. These firms also favoured the merger of all the four public sector general insurance companies.

  Insurance employees and their unions consider the bill as an attempt to weaken the public sector general insurance business, especially when the sector is opened up for private participation. The employees are agitating for some time now. When mergers and consolidations are taking place in all sectors the world over, especially in financial institutions, splitting the GIC will only lead to higher overhead expenses and also higher premium rates for the insuring public. In the process, the social insurance provided to the weaker sections of society at subsidised premium rates would suffer.

  To protest against the bill, therefore, LIC and GIC employees staged a walk-out from their workplaces and went on a two-hour strike before lunch interval on May 10. They are now in the process of considering other agitational methods to save the sector.