The Employees’ Providdent Fund Organisation (EPFO) is on a roll. It has already announced a loyalty-cum-life benefit of up to Rs 50,000 on retirement at the age of 58 or 60 years, for those who have contributed to the scheme for 20 years or more.
Last month, Bandaru Dattatreya, Union Minister for Labour and Employment, said the EPFO was developing an online claims settlement process which will be integrated with the Unified Mobile App for New-age Governance (UMANG). Now a more practical and much-needed initiative has been cleared for EPF members. Earlier, if an EPF member required urgent money from his or her provident fund, it was mandatory to furnish a certificate from an authorised person like a doctor in case of illness or certified copies of wedding invitation cards etc. in case of marriage.
Obviously, these steps caused delays. Not anymore. Dattatreya has told the EPFO to allow members to submit a self-declaration for such advances. The new facility has also been extended to differently-abled members. “This is in continuation of initiatives taken by the EPFO as part of the next phase of its e-governance reforms with a view to make the services of the EPFO available to its stakeholders in an efficient and transparent manner,” the minister said.
Simultaneously, the EPFO has linked with Aadhaar and the UAN (Universal Account Number). What are the benefits? All members who have activated their UAN and seeded their Aadhaar with the EPFO, can now apply for final settlement of their provident fund (PF), pension withdrawal or part-withdrawal of their PF from their UAN interface directly. According to the labour ministry, these three forms collectively constitute over 80 per cent of the EPFO’s workload of claims and require no additional paperwork.
Altogether 1.68 crore Aadhar numbers have been linked with the Universal Account Numbers till 31 March 2017. According to the EPFO, the process is entirely online. All new subscribers, including those left out, are consistently urged by the EPFO through their respective employers, to complete the uploading of their Aadhaar number to achieve complete linking of the Aadhaar number with the UAN.
Recently, the finance ministry approved the rate of interest on EPFO fund at 8.65 per cent for FY17, to benefit four crore members. Hope, this is the first of many more employee-friendly initiatives of the ministry.
BW Reporters
Ashish Sinha is an experienced business journalist who has covered FMCG, auto, infrastructure, tourism, telecom among several other beats. Ashish has keen interest in the regulatory scenario impacting different sectors. He writes on aviation, railways, post and telegraph, infrastructure, defence, media & entertainment, among a wide variety of other subjects.
