In order to cut flab and improve efficiency, public sector general insurance companies are planning to offer a second round of voluntary retirement scheme to their employees.

While the first round of VRS was offered to Class-II or development officers last fiscal, officials of General Insurance Public Sector Association said the second VRS would be offered to Class-I, Class-III and Class-IV staff.

The proposal for second VRS was given by GIPSA to the finance ministry but the companies have not been intimated about the details, a senior ministry official told PTI.

The government targets to reduce staff strength by 1,600-2,400 employees in the four PSUs -- New India Assurance, United India Insurance, National Insurance and Oriental Insurance Company.

"The second VRS would be announced hopefully in the later part of this fiscal. It will target about 10-15 per cent of the 16,000 officials in the top management and lower grades," senior officials in Oriental Insurance said.

The VRS comes in the wake of redundancy in upper and lower grade staff after the PSU companies decided to rationalise manpower and step up IT upgradation drive, GIPSA sources said.

The high staff strength was also increasing the management expenses of these companies, who are already facing stiff competition from their lean private competitors.

The first VRS was offered to about 1,400 development officers of the four PSU general insurers.