New Delhi: The government is considering a proposal to reduce threshold limit for coverage of firms under the EPF Act to 10 persons. At present, all those firms employing 20 or more workers are covered by the retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) for providing social security net.
“A proposal to reduce the threshold limit from 20 persons to 10 persons for coverage under the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 is included in the comprehensive amendments to the Act, which is under consideration of the government,” minister of state for labour Vishnu Deo Sai said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.
“The timeframe for implementing this proposal has not been fixed. The number of employees to be benefited from this proposal has not been worked out,” the minster informed the House.
Meanwhile, in another reply to the House, he said that EPFO has no plan to bring unorganised workers under the provident fund scheme. EPFO runs social security schemes including Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme 1952, Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 and Employees Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme 1976 for the organised sector workers at present.
Additionally, in another major development the retirement fund body has asked its field staff to take steps for enforcing government’s decision of raising wage ceiling to Rs 15,000 to cover the organised sector workers under the social security net.
The staff has also been asked to take steps for providing minimum monthly pension of Rs 1,000 under its schemes. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFO) office order stated clearly that the gazette notifications regarding the two decisions “are likely to be issued very soon”.
In the Union Budget speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced that the wage ceiling for coverage of workers in organised sector under social security schemes run by the EPFO would be raised to Rs 15,000 per month, from Rs 6,500, and the minimum monthly pension of Rs 1000 would be provided under the Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 (EPS-95).
According to the office order, the pensionable salary for calculating the pension shall be the average of the monthly pay drawn during the contributory period of service in the span of 60 months preceding the date of exit from the membership.
