Many people will lose jobs if private investors buy into LIC, say employees in letter to PM
Not just opposition parties, now the employees of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) too are protesting against the Union government’s decision to sell as much as a 10 per cent stake in the company through the issuing of an IPO. The stake sale has been planned for between January and March 2022.
The government had told the Lok Sabha last March, in an answer to a question, that it was not privatising the LIC through the IPO but raising its market share and bringing in more investments for better prospects of its policyholders.
However, recently, the All India LIC Employees’ Federation (AILEF), which represents about 4,000 employees, wrote a letter to the prime minister and MPs, protesting against the listing. It said the stake sale could result in job losses and impact the company’s social infrastructure spending plans.
The stake sale will also affect the construction of various infrastructures, including across the rural regions of the country, which are not often profitable ventures. The company has been funding capital-intensive infrastructure projects such as roads, railways and power for more than six decades, but now all the money will go to profit-making capitalist machines, the letter said.
“We believe that selling national asset is a wilfully disruptive policy,” said Rajesh Kumar, General Secretary, AILEF, in an interview to a TV channel. “Recruitment will be minimal, outsourcing will happen and job losses will take place”, he went on.
The employees are planning on a wider movement if their concerns are not paid heed to by the Union government, and have also given a call to the other big trade unions across the country to join them.
