10.4 lakh new members in ESIC in April

Even as Covid-19 took an ugly turn in April, the ESIC-run social security scheme saw 10.41 lakh new members in the month, up 8.5% from the monthly average of 9.59 lakh recorded in 2020-21.

The Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948, is applicable to non-seasonal, manufacturing establishments employing 10 or more workers. The wage ceiling is Rs 21,000 per month.

Since April 2018, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) has been bringing out the employment-related statistics in the formal sector covering the period from September 2017 onwards.

According to the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Friday, between September 2017 and April 2021, around 5.10 crore new subscribers joined the ESIC scheme.

Enrolments with ESIC during 2020-21 dropped nearly 24% to 1.15 crore amid the pandemic, compared to 1.51 crore in 2019-20. In 2018-19, 1.49 crore new subscribers joined the scheme and a total of 83.35 lakh subscribers joined between September 2017 and March 2018.

According to the report, net new enrolments with retirement fund body EPFO stood at 12.76 lakh in April 2021.

It showed that from September 2017 to April 2021, around 4.26 crore new subscribers joined the Employees’ Provident Fund scheme.

The report also showed that a total of 55,844 new subscribers joined and contributed in the NPS central government, state governments and corporate schemes during September 2017 to April 2021. Overall, between September 2017 and April 2021, a total of 26,45,681 new subscribers from these sectors joined the NPS.

The report, titled ‘Payroll Reporting in India: An Employment Perspective – April 2021’, said that since the number of subscribers is from various sources, there are elements of overlap and the estimates are not additive.