India’s Church helps implement pension scheme

(June 08, 2011) The Indian Church’s labor commission has come out with a plan to enable casual workers to capitalize on the federal government’s New Pension Scheme - NPS. “ Its aim is to provide social security to the economically weaker sections”, said Fr. Jose Vattakuzhy, director of the Workers Federation of India, WFI, the legal body of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India for non-unionized workers. Under the scheme, the government will contribute 1,000 rupees, equivalent to US$ 22.70 to a worker for a year until 2014, provided the subscriber contributes 1,000-2,000 rupees.
The casual sector contributes over 60 percent of India’s gross domestic product, yet 94 percent of people in this category, have no collective bargaining capacity nor any social security, said Fr. Vattakuzhy. The priest explained that all this is set to change since the WFI has come up with an employees’ social security plan, along with the NPS scheme. Noting that a major hurdle in implementing any government scheme for the poor is lack of proof of identity, the priest said “We will arrange to provide identity cards to those, who don’t have them and ensure as many of the 520 million workers in the unorganized sector to take advantage of the scheme. He said “Workers in the unorganized sector, including those self-employed, between 18-60 years, and not covered under any pension plan, can join this scheme. The priest added that there will be facilitation centers at all 164 dioceses in the country for giving information and enrolling members. He said that the WFI will also provide a nominal insurance of 25,000 rupees for accidental death.