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Kolkata: If you thought the GST rejig was the only Diwali gift, think again. EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation) is likely to announce a few measures one of which will be seamless transactions and withdrawal from the EPF account through ATMs just like bank transactions, reports have said. And this reform -- a rather spectacular one considering the fuddy-duddy EPFO only a few years ago -- could be timed around Diwali.
Once the step is announced it will benefit about 8 crore subscribers of the EPFO. Union Labour and employment minister Mansukh Mandaviya is supposed to preside over a meeting of the Central Board of Trustees of the EPFO in the second week of October when these could be adopted and declared. Diwali is scheduled on October 20 this year.
Also on the cards is the issue of raising the minimum pension, known as EPS, from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500-2,500, something that has been a long-standing demand of labour unions. The announcement of EPFO 3.0 which will allow withdrawal of money from the EPF accounts via the ATMs has been a matter of discussion this year and it was earlier thought that the ministry will announce the step by the middle of this year. There are also indications that UPI services could also be linked to EPF accounts, but it has not been confirmed by officials.
Though EPFO is an agency that regulates and oversees accumulation of funds that are generally supposed to take care of the expenditure of an employee or his/her family members after retirement, there are provisions in the Act that allow an individual to make partial and early withdrawals from the account. Many of these provisions are to enable an employee to meet sudden and emergency requirements such as medical expenses, wedding arrangement, higher education expenses, purchase of dwelling unit etc.
There are strict guidelines as how much can one withdraw. These amounts are also linked to the duration of employment and contributions to the EPF account of the employee. Earlier it used to take a long time for an individual to take money out from the EPFO account even for emergency purposes. In order to end the harassment, the EPFO decided to upgrade the brick-and-mortar system to the digital technology domain which would even allow one to take money out just by walking to the nearby ATM. According to earlier, reports, the back-end technology work has been completed and now the final steps are being put in place.
In another significant step, the EPFO has already raised the auto-settlement limit for advance claims from existing Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakhs. This move will help lakhs of EPFO members to receive funds faster since the mode will be auto-settlement and the application won't wait for layers of approval.
