A committee of Parliament has informed on Tuesday that keeping in mind the pension scheme of Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), giving Rs 1,000 towards minimum monthly pension to the subscribers is considered too low.
In such a situation, it is considered necessary that the Ministry of Labor considers it necessary to take forward the proposal of increasing the pension amount.
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Labor in its report tabled in Parliament on Demand for Grants 2022-23 has informed that, “The monthly pension of Rs 1,000 fixed eight years ago has now gone down considerably.”
According to the Parliamentary Committee, it is considered important for the Ministry of Labor and Employment that it needs to go ahead after taking adequate budgetary support from the Finance Ministry as per the recommendation of the high-powered Monitoring Committee.
Apart from this, EPFO should evaluate all its pension schemes with the help of experts so that there is a need to increase the monthly member pension after the appropriate limit.
The High Powered Monitoring Committee has been constituted by the Labor Ministry in the year 2018 keeping in view the evaluation and review of the Employees’ Pension Scheme, 1995. The committee has informed that it was also recommended that after increasing the minimum monthly pension for members/widow/widow pensioners, it is necessary to increase to Rs.2,000.
For this, it has been considered necessary to get the necessary annual budgetary provision done. However, the Finance Ministry could not agree to increase the minimum monthly pension from Rs 1,000. According to the parliamentary committee, many committees have discussed this in detail.
The report also informed that EPFO members, especially those retiring before 2015, face difficulties for ‘e-nomination’. Apart from this, there are also problems in the functioning of the ‘Online Transfer Claim Portal’ (OTCP).
