Health and Pension benefits for unorganized sector workers through e-Shram portal soon

19 Jul 2022 , 09:51 AM

The labor ministry is working to improve the benefits package for the more than 270 million unorganized employees who have enrolled on the e-Shram site and will soon get pension and health benefits in addition to accidental coverage.

The Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan Yojana, the National Pension Scheme for merchants and self-employed, the Atal Pension Yojana, and the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana are just a few of the advantageous programs that may be introduced.

The Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana now offers 2 lakh accidental coverage to employees who register themselves on the e-Shram site. As of now, there are 279.7 million workers who have registered on the e-Shram platform.

380 million of India’s 480 million employees are employed in the unorganized sector, while the remaining 100 million are employed in the organized sector, where they are eligible for pension and provident fund benefits.

According to a senior government source, the Center is in negotiations with the states to connect their social security programs with the national site in order to maximize the benefits provided to unorganized employees. The official stated, “This may be done by facilitating data movement between the central site and the state portals and vice-versa.

To finalize the standard operating procedures after which data integration will begin, a high-level committee headed by the additional secretary (labor) has been established. The idea is to seed such unorganized employees with the information already present on the site by obtaining the residence and ration card information from state governments. By doing this, it will be ensured that these workers would still be eligible for benefits even if they move to owe to reverse migration or back, as happened during the pandemic-induced lockdown.

All workers are required to have social security, according to the Social Security Code, 2020. Additionally, it enables the government to create new regulations for gig and platform employees as well as other unorganized workers under the auspices of already-existing social security programs like the Employees’ Provident Fund and Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC).

The government has already made the e-Shram site portable with the EPFO to permit labor movement between the unorganized and organized sectors as well as vice versa.