He was presenting a paper at a seminar on `Plight of Industry' organised by the Calcutta based social-action group Nagarik Mancha. Chakraborty is also a member of the Central Board of Trustees, Employees Provident Fund and Social Security Association of India.

"The money in exempted funds are accessed by the owners, apart from defaulting on regular payments. And this is available interest free. We demand that the government empower the provident fund authorities with powers similar to those with the Income Tax department and customs officers," Chakraborty said. According to Chakraborty, the total PF accumulation in India till March 1998 is Rs 50,909 crores. Of which 27,000crores are in exempted funds. The annual accumulation is around Rs 6,000 crores and around 10 per cent people retire every year. "Thus a fund worth Rs 50,000 crore at least, is maintained with the government on account of social security and this can be gainfully utilised for workers welfare," he said. "However we are going to oppose any dilution of that fund for the purpose of infrastructure creation as the finance minister is suggesting," Chakraborty said. "We had even approached the banks trade unions to help us in forcing the promoters to present a clean slate on the social security account before asking for assistance. However there was no response from these associations," Chakraborty added. "The provident funds are maintained in public accounts with a 8.33 per cent interest. These are funds that remain with the government for more than 25 years, at the least and we demand that the government should consider paying 12 per cent interest on these funds" he said.

Chakraborty further said that the trickledown concept has failed and there is hardly any social security in the unorganised sector.