Greeting workers on International Workers Day with
the.
Sh. Bandaru Dattatreya,
the Union Minister for Labour & Employment
(Independent Charge) launched a special Mission consolidation drive “One
Employee-One EPF Account” for members of the EPFO.
Sh. Bandaru Dattatreya,
on the occasion stated that in the recent past, EPFO has taken several IT based
initiatives to provide convenient and efficient services to its stakeholders.
The initiative of launching the Mission consolidation “One Member One EPF
Account” is a step towards encouraging EPF members to access enhanced IT
enabled services through UAN accounts that are linked with Aadhaar.
Sh. Dattatreya also informed this
drive, would result in EPF members having just one EPF account and
multiple conveniences. The Universal Account Number that is Aadhar
seeded will consolidate multiple past service accounts, across various spells
of employment during working life of an EPF member.
Sh. Shankar Aggarwal,
Secretary (Labour & Employment) elaborated that
the EPF member would be requested to provide all his earlier EPF accounts along
with his UAN linked account, Member ID and registered Mobile Number. And EPFO
would facilitate the transfer of all these accounts into his present account.
Instructions have been issued to establishments that in case any new employee
joins an establishment, they may furnish, UAN, if any, allotted to the member
earlier, or declare that s/he is becoming a PF member for the first time.
Dr. V.P. Joy, Central Provident Fund Commissioner
added that the success of this drive would reduce not only the burden of
members but would also result in ease of work for EPF employees. Similar to
other IT initiatives taken by EPFO that have brought transparency and
efficiency in the working of EPFO, the success of this drive would further
strengthen the bond between EPFO and EPF members. By the end of April 2016, UAN
has been issued to some 67716584 members
To educate workers and
strengthen the cause of social security, EPFO today launches a special drive to
encourage EPF members to consolidate their multiple accounts. The members whose
accounts are scattered face many inconveniences such as approaching multiple
employers located at multiple locations for settlement of claims. They also
face the inconvenience of keeping record of multiple scheme certificates issued
in the process. To know about the updated EPF balances, they need to approach
multiple offices. With consolidation, a member can have complete control of his
EPF account apart from accessing variety of IT enabled services such as email/sms alerts, access to e-pass book etc.
EPFO has been advising members to link all their PF
account numbers with the UAN and to also seed KYC data against their UAN
number. Aadhaar has been uploaded against 1.30 crore UAN, out of which 1.03 crore
Aadhaar have been digitally authenticated by the
establishments. The establishments are advised to upload and then digitally
authenticate the KYC information. KYC primarily means Aadhaar,
PAN and Bank Account. With the enactment of Aadhaar
Act, 2016 (26th March 2016), EPFO is now seeking to make Aadhaar, the primary identifier. Members having Aadhaar seeded UAN, saves the inconvenience of claims forms
attestation by the employers.
Explaining the benefits of integration of members’
multiple PF accounts Dr. Joy said that consolidated accounts enable continuance
of lifelong PF membership, and allow PF, pension and insurance benefits on
combined service. Today, large number of members are
unaware of Pension benefits that can come through consolidation, defeating the
very soul of the EPF legislation. EPFO therefore seeks to encourage
members to continue their PF membership by offering increasingly better
services and ease of convenience. Larger aim is to help members to upgrade
their quantum and variety of benefits being offered by EPFO.
In order to boost the process of seeding the Universal
Account Number (UAN) with KYC, an “Incentive Scheme” has been launched for the
employers. Under this scheme a claim refund of upto
10% of administrative charges payable to EPFO can be claimed upon completing
specified tasks (furnishing member information and digitally authenticated KYC
details). The Scheme shall be in operation for one
year, beginning 1st January 2016 to 31st December, 2016
This drive will
run for one year. During this drive following actions will be taken by
EPFO:
·
Run a Publicity campaign at regular
intervals in Print, electronic and digital media
·
A software has been launched today for
centralized processing that will transfer and consolidate accounts
with ease.
Features of the software are:
·
A
member has to provide his current activated UAN along with the current member
ID & Mobile number registered at UAN Member portal.
·
On
validating these credentials, EPFO will facilitate the member to
register his/her as many as 10 earlier EPF
accounts.
·
The
earlier PF member IDs provided by members will be forwarded to EPFO field
office to which earlier member ID pertains. The information provided to field
offices will also include current member ID & Mobile number of the member,
so that the members can be contacted and facilitated to consolidate his
previous EPF Accounts to the Current EPF Account.
·
Wide publicity will be given to make use
of “Inoperative Help Desk” that helps an EPF member to integrate/ settle such
accounts.
·
An electronic de-duplication process to be carried out
by EPFO.
·
“EPFO-E-samkisha”
software that is launched to be used for
monitoring and implementation of the
programmme.
Features of E samiksha
software are:
·
EPFO e-Samiksha is a
real time, online system for follow-up action on the decisions taken.
·
The follow up action will be required to be updated by
the offices continuously and the status can be viewed centrally.
·
Business divisions and the field offices can
securely access the system through a log-in/password.
·
This system can also be configured to review the follow up
actions in respect of other meetings, if require.
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