Media Release
Udupi, Oct 27: The 52nd general conference of Insurance Employees' Union, Udupi division was held at “Brahmashree Narayana Guru Sabha Bhavan” at Puttur here , recently.
Marking the beginning, a massive rally was organized by the union involving members of fraternal trade unions of Puttur town to spread awareness among the public about the contributions of LIC in nation building and the persistent attacks on the part of the government to destabilize the state owned LIC.
K Venugopal Rao, vice-president, South Central Zone Insurance Employees’ Federation, Hyderabad inaugurated the conference. K Venugopal Rao, in his inaugural address, initially complimented the members for securing the recent historic wage revision after a series of persistent struggles. Talking of the tremendous achievement of LIC, he said LIC now the sixth largest insurer in the world having a domestic market share of 70% in the life insurance field. LIC contributes steadily to the development projects of
the Nation and adds considerably to the present GDP growth rate of 6%, he said.
Rao referred the two draconian Bills, Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill 2008 and LIC Act (Amendment) Bill 2009, moved by the government to weaken LIC and thereby jettisoning the interests of the Rs 30 crore policyholders, at the behest of international finance capital. He complimented the members for the strike action launched against the bills on september 7, which he said was a great success. He criticized the obstinate stand of the government implementing the two bills resulting in disinvestment of public
sector General insurance companies and Life Insurance Corporation of India, despite the
recommendations of standing committee of parliament which upheld the union's views and
argued against the government's proposals.
Rao concurred and welcomed the views expressed by Prof Noel Mc Cardo, visiting professor of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, nominated for a comprehensive case study on LIC, who graded LIC a model institution contributing a lion's share to the GDP growth of the country.
Referring to the American President Barack Obama's visit to India, he said Obama is having the same
ideology as of his predecessor, after recession, the economy of USA is bleek, growing at the rate of 1% against the required rate of 3%. He said the persons who propagated globalisation are drowned under recession now. He cautioned the bountiful trade packages to India through Mr. Obama's delegation would aim at benefiting the creditors of recession only at our cost.
Talking of the recent Supreme Court's verdict directing the Government to distribute the bufferstock of food grains lying in our godowns, Rao commented on the reaction of Indian Prime Minister who dismissed the verdict saying the issue is a policy matter of the State, Rao questioned why the Prime Minister share a different view when Supreme Court banned workers' Strike as unlawful. He said that the service and
struggle are the two weapons at our hands which supplement each other in protecting Life Insurance Corporation of India.
The chief guest, S K Geetha, general secretary, Insurance Corporation's Employees' Union, Bangalore I DO in her address said that the present wage settlement in LIC is the outcome of struggles of the Union on wage demands based on justice Das Commission's recommendations. She remarked that the wrong economic policies have created prosperity in the ocean of poverty as evident from the fact that when godowns are flooded with food grains, the poor people struggle for a square meal.
She drawn attention on enormous amount of tax payers' money spent on Commonwealth Games 2010 and the connected scandals in CWG extravaganza. She questioned whether we feel proud to stand forth in the world in the number of millionaires list when we stand 130th in human development index? She said during the current fiscal when Rs 5,15,000 crore concessions were given to rich class, what concessions to common man can Government boast of ? and said there is no difference in economic policies pursued both by Congress and BJP.
D Yakoob, A S Acharya and Vadiraj Budhya greeted at the conference. Prabhakar B Kunder, president, IEU, Udupi, Gurudath, general secretary, IEU, Udupi, M Dev Vasanth Kumar, president IEU, Shimoga, arayana Gowda, Class I Officers' Association, P A Shetty, Development Officers' Union, Ramesh,
Com Srinivas and B A Shariff of Agents Organisation, Sathish, CITU and Sukanya, Janavadi Mahila Sanghatan were present.
The convenor of the conference, P N Padmini compered the programme.
The following were unanimously elected as the Office Bearers of the Union for the year 2010-11.
President - Prabhakar B Kunder
Vice-presidents- Deric A Rebello, K Vishwanath
General secretary - U Gurudath
Joint secretaries - Umesh, S Kavitha
Treasurer - Sripada Herle P
Assisstant treasurer - Shekhar Poojary