New Delhi: The government plans to open up its key social security scheme — the Employees’ Provident Fund to self-employed individuals, a move that could expand security coverage to more than 90% of workers not falling under any social security scheme at present. At present only employees of organisations having minimum 10 employees are eligible to subscribe to the provident fund and pension schemes run by the EPFO.
With this move lawyers, doctors, chartered accountants and other self-employed individuals will be able to subscribe to the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, which manages the retirement corpus of about 60 million employees.
The idea of making EPFO individual-centric rather than establishment-centric is under examination, the Economic Times mentioned in a report citing an unnamed government official. The official further said that a decision is expected after the passage of the Social Security Code Bill, which was introduced in Lok Sabha late last year.
Worth mentioning here is that the Social Security Code subsumes 8 central labour laws, including the Employees Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act (EPF&MP) Act, 1952.
Source: ET Now News
