While taking stock of the performance of EPFO in the month of December it has been noted that for the period April to December 2015, EPFO settled 90.6 lakh claims. Out of this 40% was settled within 3 days and close to 80% within 10 days. More than 96% of the claims were settled within the stipulated 20 day period.
In a major policy decision the Finance Investment and Audit Committee (FIAC) of the CBT, EPFO approved the accounting policy and method of accounting for equity and related investments. This decision is taken with a view to bring procedural clarity and also to serve as a guide to the various exempted establishments who also have to now invest 5% of their corpus in the equity market as per government guidelines.
Dissemination and activation of Universal Account Number (UAN) was given renewed emphasis during the month and it has been decided to hold special camps in industrial clusters across the country for the benefit of employers and employees. Also a running mechanism of information exchange with jurisdictional Labour Commissioners is also envisaged for procuring information relating to new employees eligible to be enrolled under the schemes run by EPFO. Also a facility has been launched for upfront allotment of UAN to employees under which an employer can generate UAN for their employees themselves. Further, UAN based simplified forms have been introduced using which a member can file his PF claim by giving the bare minimum required details without the employer’s attestation or intervention. This facility is available to those members whose UAN is activated and their KYC details including AADHAR and BANK ACCOUNT have been digitally authenticated beforehand by the employer.
EPFO had earlier in 2014 introduced online registration of establishments with the Organisation doing away with a lot of paperwork and contributing to greater ease of doing business in the country. Going a step further, it has been decided to introduce digital signature based authentication by the employer at the time of submission of online application requests. This would totally eliminate the requirement of Enforcement Officers’ visit to the establishment for verification and thus would result in hassle free business environment for the establishment to function.
Sh.K.K.Jalan, Central PF Commissioner stated that grievance redressal has always occupied the centre stage as more than 20,000 thousand grievances were redressed during the month and only 2,461 grievances were pending. It is noteworthy that more than 80% of these grievances were pending for less than 7 days. In the calendar year 2015, EPFO was able to redress a total of 2,03,288 grievances.
Taking a step to bring EPFO closer to its clients, EPFO has made its presence felt on Social Media, the official Facebook and Twitter pages of EPFO were launched in the month of December 2015 by the Minister of State, (Independent Charge), Labour & Employment, Sh. Bandaru Dattatreya on the occasion of Good Governance day on 25 December 2015.
IndianBureaucracy.com forward its best wishes .