Nirmala Sitharaman
Nirmala Sitharaman. File photo

The Centre will pay the provident fund (PF) share till 2022 for those employees, who lost their jobs but were called back again to their work in small scale jobs, said Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday.

However, the units, where the employees are engaged, should be registered with the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).

Finance minister Sitharaman said in a district, if over 25,000 migrant workers working in the informal sector return to their native place then they would get benefits from 16 central schemes for employment.

“In 2020, we increased the (MGNREGA) Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act budget from Rs 60,000 crore to around Rs one lakh crore due to Covid,” ANI quoted Union minister Sitharaman as saying.

The provisional payroll data of EPFO released earlier on Friday highlighted a growing trend with 12.83 lakh net payroll additions during June this year.

The Union ministry of labour and employment in a release said: “With respect to payroll data, the impact of second wave of Covid-19 pandemic waned during June 2021, leading to tremendous growth in net payroll additions as compared to April and May 2021.”

“Month-on-month analysis reveals an increase of 5.09 lakh additions in net subscribers during June, 2021 as compared to the previous month of May, 2021,” the release said.

Around 6.15 lakh new subscribers were in the age group of 18-25 years, which is 47.89% of the net additions.

This was followed by members in the age group of 29-35 years with around 2.55 lakh payroll additions.

Age-wise data indicates that first-time job seekers are joining organised sector workforce in large numbers.

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) provides provident fund, pension benefits to the members on their retirement and family pension and insurance benefits to their families in case of untimely death of the member.