new delhi formal sector workers may soon have an option to choose between epf scheme run by retirement fund body epfo and the new pension scheme nps as also between and health insurance products and employees state insurance corporations esic health cover the proposal to provide these options to organised sector workers was announced today by the finance minister arun jaitley in his budget speech for 201516 it is also proposed that for workers getting wages below a certain threshold contribution to epf employees provident fund will be optional however their employers would have to contribute towards the scheme with respect to the epf the employee needs to be provided two options firstly the employee may opt for epf or the new pension scheme npsfor employees below a certain threshold of monthly income contribution to epf should be optional without affecting or reducing the employers contribution jaitley said in the parliament he further said that the employee should have an option of choosing either esi health cover or a health insurance recognised by insurance regulatory development authority he said that the government intend to bring amending legislation in this regard after stakeholder consultation at present over five crore workers are covered under the mandatory social security schemes run by the employees provident fund organisation epfo the nps is applicable to all employees of central government service except armed forces and central autonomous bodies joining service on or after january 1 2004 any other government employee who is not mandatorily covered under nps can also subscribe to nps under all citizen model as it is open for all at present about two crore workers and their families are provided mandatory health insurance by the esic explaining about the proposal jaitley saidthe situation with regard to the dormant epf accounts and the claim ratios of esis is too well known to be repeated here it has been remarked that both epf and esi have hostages rather than clientsthe low paid worker suffers deductions greater than the better paid workers in percentage terms the minister also announced to use unclaimed deposits of about rs 3000 crore in the ppf and rs 6000 crore in the epf corpus to create a senior citizen welfare fund in the finance bill this corpus will be used to subsidise the premiums of vulnerable groups such as old age pensioners bpl card holders small and marginal farmers and others a detailed scheme would be issued in march