Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said that the NDA Government has taken various initiatives in last one year to ensure that more and more people are covered by various social security schemes.
He described these schemes as the way for the future, and added that the government would introduce other variants of these schemes in the near future.
At present, he said, that only 11 percent of the nation's population was covered by various pension schemes and only 20 percent were insured.
Jaitley said that the Centre wants to improve the situation by bringing the maximum number of people under these benefits.
He said that three ambitious social security schemes-the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY), the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY) and the Atal Pension Yojana (APY) were launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2015.
These schemes, he said, would play an important role in realising the dream of universal social security, and added that they have been successful in evoking a positive response from people at large.
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The finance minister said that so far, 7.84 crore people have registered under PMSBY, 2.70 crore under PMJJBY and 4.69 lakh subscribers have joined APY.
Jaitley further said that in order to have better policy formulation and coordination, the Centre plans to bring about various social security schemes run by different departments and inistries under one roof.
He was speaking at the second meeting of the consultative committee attached to his ministry on the subject of " PM's Social Security Schemes".
Dr. Hasmukh Aadhia, Secretary, Department of Financial Services, made a presentation on the present level of implementation of these schemes.
After the presentation, the members of the consultative committee gave their suggestions and observations with regard to these social security schemes.
A majority of the members congratulated the government for both launching and successfully implementing these social security schemes and made many suggestions for further improving their performance.
Jaitley said that it is only the beginning of journey for covering large section of population under social security programmes and there is a long and challenging journey forward.