More than 120,000 applied to opt for higher pension till March 9: Govt

As many as 1,20,279 persons have applied online to opt for higher pension under Employees' Pension Scheme 1995 (EPS-95) till March 9, 2023, Parliament was informed on Thursday.

In November last year, the Supreme Court had asked the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to give four months time to subscribers as well as pensioners to contribute on their actual salaries towards EPS-95.

Many EPFO subscribers have been contributing on threshold (pensionable salary) of Rs 15,000 per month which is less than their actual pay. This option will enable beneficiaries to get higher pension eventually.

"Till 09.03.2023, 1,20,279 applications/ joint options were applied online at Unified Portal of EPFO by the employees," Minister of State for Labour and Employment Rameswar Teli said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

The total number of beneficiaries in accordance with the directions given in the Supreme Court judgement of November 4, 2022 will depend upon the employees exercising the joint option and the number of such employees who are eligible, the minister explained.

The quantum of monthly pension payout for such pensioners will depend upon the number of eligible members exercising the option for pension at higher salary, he added.

As per instructions issued by EPFO in accordance with the apex court's judgment, the joint option for pension on higher wages is available to only those employees where employee's and employer's contributions were on actual salary exceeding the prevalent wage ceiling and who did not exercise joint option under para 11(3) of the pre-amendment EPS-95 (since deleted) while being members of EPS-95 and were members prior to September 1, 2014 and continued to be members on or after September 1, 2014, he stated.

In another reply to the House, the minister said that as on March 10, 2023, a total of 28.64 crore unorganised workers have been registered on eShram portal.

As on March 31, 2022 a total of 3,250 representations have been lodged in the Grievance Management System claiming for accidental deaths/ disability by eShram registrants, he added.

He also told the House that as on March 13, 2023, 2.79 crore domestic and household workers have registered on eShram portal out of which 2.67 crore are women.

In another reply, Teli said as a step towards implementation of the all four Labour Codes, rules are required to be framed by the central government as well as by state governments.

The central government and a number of states/Union Territories (UTs) have pre-published rules under the four Labour Codes.

As per available information, five, eight, eight and 10 States/UTs have not so far pre-published draft rules under the Code on Wages, 2019, the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, respectively, he stated.