New Delhi: The Union government has signed off on a plan to overhaul the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFO) I-T infrastructure, among a slew of reforms, amid long-standing grievances of subscribers about its grueling processes.
A modernisation drive, starting with migration to a new I-T system, has been launched after several rounds of reviews by senior officials led by Union labour minister Mansukh Mandaviya.
The state-run retirement fund manager has often faced complaints from employees about delays in transactions or resolution of issues, such as correction of misspelled names or phone numbers. These details are critical for subscribers to access their corpus of savings.
The I-T system revamp is expected to be completed within three months, and software professionals have been asked to ensure minimal disruption, Mandaviya said on Wednesday.
The labour ministry is on track to implement what is being called the EPFO 2.01 project aimed at easing processes and turn-around times for various members’ and employers’ transactions, according to the minister.
Authorities are putting in place a re-engineered and rationalized centralized payments and claims settlement mechanism in mission mode, a second official said.
{{/usCountry}}Authorities are putting in place a re-engineered and rationalized centralized payments and claims settlement mechanism in mission mode, a second official said.
{{/usCountry}}Provident funds provide retirement income for over 67 million salaried Indians. It often is the key corpus of lifetime savings for working people. The savings interest rate offered by EPFO, at 8.25% for FY24, is a widely watched metric of the salaried middle class.
Reforms under implementation include centralised claim settlements, including end-to-end auto-processing, centralised monthly pension disbursements, Universal Account Number (UAN)-based accounting, restructured electronic challan-cum-receipt (ECR) with due statement, and remittance challan.
The fund manager will also scrap the requirement of transfer of member ID on change of jobs. In a key change, the EPFO has introduced auto-mode processing of all types of advance claims up to Rs.1 lakh, the minister said.
“The EPFO’s claim rejection rate has gone up in recent times to the dismay of subscribers. In many cases, this is due to technical or issues with accounts, like discrepancies in documents and name mismatches, etc.,” said Aarti Gupta, partner, Lamba and Associates.