Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Oct 3: Minister for Finance, Abdul Rahim Rather and Minister for Labour and Employment, Abdul Gani Malik today introduced two bills in the Legislative Assembly.
While introducing a bill to protect the interest of depositors of financial establishments, Mr Rather said, “a large number of unknown/unauthorized financial establishments started their business in the State in recent years and closed their activities soon thereafter, thereby duping the gullible public of hard earned saving worth tens of corers of rupees”.
“Most of these establishments turned out to be bogus and their sole aim was to loot the general public. The modus operandi employed by these establishments was to offer fanciful returns on deposits and commercially impossible low interest rates on loans for which they would charge handsome service charges in advance”, the Minister said, adding “the promoters of these bogus financial establishments fled from the State, leaving thousands of innocent citizens in a quandary, not to speak of getting returns as promised, these firms defaulted even in the return of the principal sums of the depositors and advance service charges taken from the loanees”.
Mr Rather further said, “this state of affairs has necessitated taking appropriate measures to curb the unscrupulous activities of such financial institutions in the State and to protect the interests of the public at large”, adding “this legislation aims to achieve this end by prescribing stringent punishment for such wrong doings by bogus financial establishments, besides providing for the attachment of their properties”.
While introducing a bill to amend the Jammu and Kashmir Employees Provident Funds (and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1961, Mr Malik said that with a view to reconcile the conflicting interests of labour and industry, a high level committee was constituted to discuss the issues of Federation of Industries with regard to increasing the threshold limit of the applicability the Act.
“The Bill is aimed at amending the act to increase threshold limit of number of employees in an establishment for coverage under the EPF Scheme from 5 to 10 prospectively, provided that the establishments covered at present, and having employees lesser than ten, will continue to be within the ambit of the scheme in respect of the employees already covered”, the Minister said, adding “by way of amendment the Government is aiming to increase rate of contribution of the employer’s from 8.33 % to 12%”.
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