Union Minister for labour and Employment, Steel and Mines Narendra Singh Tomar here on Thursday launched a guaranteed minimum pension of Rs1,000 per month under Employees’ Pension Scheme, 1995.
Talking to mediapersons Tomar said the Union Government has decided to organise functions in every office of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation spread across 120 locations in the country. It has also been decided that in 37 locations, Union Ministers will preside over the functions and felicitate the pensioners whose pension is getting increased. Tomar stated that this was being done to interact with the pensioners and to ensure that no eligible person was left out. He expressed confidence that this interaction will help the EPFO to design its pension re-engineering process in a better way, he added.
The long-pending demand for increase in the pension will soon see the light of day. At present, a large number of pensioners are getting only paltry amounts as pension under the scheme. Nearly two-thirds of the pensioners are in receipt of pension of less than Rs1000. Thus, this move would benefit approximately 32 lakh out of a total of 49 lakh pensioners who are getting below Rs1000 as pension.
Notably, the wage ceiling for coverage under the three schemes of EPFO has also been increased from monthly Rs6500 to Rs15000. This increased wage ceiling is expected to bring in an additional 50 lakh employees under the ambit of these social security programmes.
The increased wage ceiling will also result into higher benefit under the EDlI from a maximum of Rs1.30 lakh to a maximum of Rs3.60 lakh.