It is a grave injustice that people who work very hard throughout their working life have end up destitute. The government servant gets a pension and other employees get some benefits at the end of their service to the nation. But the self employed and casual workers are completely forgotten, and then they live a most a miserable life after their retirement. Invariably, their families too do not look after them well, in their old age.

How long can we ignore them? I wrote to your newspaper on this subject and you were good enough to publish it as a feature article on 3. 12. 2005 under the title of Retirement benefits for workers without cost to government.

There are at least a million people who are in the category of carpenters, masons, taxi drivers including, 3-wheeler drivers, electricians, plumbers, unskilled-workers etc. who are contributing immensely to the economy of this country. They even create their own jobs but yet there is none to acknowledge their contribution to society.

This can be tackled at no cost to the government by creating a Workers’ Insurance Scheme as in the UK. Under this system all workers have to contribute to this insurance scheme. Here of course, it can be confined only to the workers of the categories mentioned above. It must be made compulsory that from the wages of these people a small deduction is retained and paid to the Department of Social Services. Even a deduction as small as Rs. 20/- a day will amount to Rs. 20 million a day. From this investment, all these workers can be given a pension on retirement.