Arpit Jajoo
The Bengal Government has introduced Social Security Yojana by converging five separate beneficiary schemes for workers in the unorganized sectors and for self-employed people. The Chief Minister of the state, Mamata Banerjee has decided to combine the older schemes and introduce a new single scheme having the benefits of all the five schemes. The decision was taken in a cabinet meeting held by Banerjee.
The five social security schemes which were merged into a single “Samajik Suraksha Yojana” are:
- Social Assistance Scheme of Provident Fund for unorganized workers
- West Bengal unorganized sector worker health security scheme
- Building and Other Construction workers’ act.
- West Bengal transport workers social security scheme
- West Bengal Bidi workers welfare scheme
State finance minister Amit Mitra told reporters at the secretariat today, “These five schemes where different compensations were forwarded to the beneficiaries will now be merged into one.” This will bring in a standard process and the compensation will also be standard. Under this scheme, one crore people from the unorganized sector will be benefited. And including their families, the total number will go up to five crore
Benefits of Samajik Suraksha Yojana:
- Samajik Suraksha Yojana is to ensure distribution of nutritional food among pregnant women, lactating mothers, children below six years and adolescent girls.
- This scheme will provide education benefits for children of the workers enrolled in the scheme.
- This scheme will cover five separate beneficiary schemes for workers in unorganized sectors and self-employed people.
Right now, the five schemes are giving benefit to around 85 lakh people in combination. The State Government of West Bengal spent around Rs. 800 crores between the time span of 2011 and 2016 for implementation of these five schemes all over the state. Once the new social security scheme is launched, the benefit will reach to people from 46 different unorganized sectors and industries. The industries and sectors include bidi workers, book-binding workers, motor mechanics, boatman, and ICDS workers. The self-employed workers from 15 different sectors will also be benefitted from the new social security Yojana. These sectors include Jewellery manufacturing and other similar sectors.
Overall, people will be able to get more benefits from the new schemes in comparison to the five earlier scheme.
