With the onset of the pandemic, lives and means of livelihood have both been lost on an unprecedented scale. And while people have rampantly lost their lives, millions of those who have survived the pandemic have lost their jobs. These are challenging times for all especially those who have lost their jobs in the last few months.

Those who already had financial difficulties find themselves to be in a deeper void then ever as their vicious cycle has turned out to be all the more vicious now.

In order to provide respite to those who have recently lost their jobs and are finding it difficult to get by, the Central government has announced the Atmanirbhar Bharat Rojgaar yojana.

The scheme was announced by the Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and the Minister of State finance, Anurag Thakur. The scheme is said to largely benefit those who have registered themselves with the Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO).

Benefits offered under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Rojgaar yojana

The benefits offered under the scheme are many, but here are some of the notable benefits you should be knowing about –

The central government will provide subsidy for two years in respect of new eligible employees engaged on or after 01 October 2020 in accordance with the following:

  1. Establishments employing up to 1000 employees: Employee’s contributions (12% of wages) and employer’s contributions (12% of wages) totaling a total of 24% of the wages.

Establishments employees more than 1000 employees: only Employee’s EPF contributions (12% of the EPF wages).

Key features of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Rojgaar Yojana

  1. The scheme has come into effect from the 1st of October 2020 and will be in effect till June 30, 2021.
  2. The benefit of the scheme will be offered to employees joining the  registered EPFO institute
  3. This would ideally benefit those employees who have a salary of less than ₹15,000 or someone who has never previously been associated with EPFO or someone who has lost his/her job between March 01 to September 30.
  4. Under this scheme, the company that has less than 50 employees will have to appoint 2 new employees in order to qualify for the subsidies offered by the scheme.
  5. The company that has over 50 employees will have to appoint 5 new employees so as to qualify for the subsidies offered by the scheme.
  6. According to the scheme, the government will give 24% stake of EPFO to both employees and employers in organizations with less than one thousand employees and 12% of employee’s share in EPFO to those in an organization with more than one thousand employees.

Summing it up

While there is no online procedure to apply for the scheme yet, you can get in touch with your nearest CSC point to gain more information on how to avail the benefits of the scheme, or you can even get in touch with the HR department of your respective organization to enquire if the benefits of the scheme are currently included in your pay packages or not.