Provident Fund Withdrawal: EPFO (Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation) will soon introduce UAN-based single accounting system for each member and automation of process flow with minimum human intervention for faster settlement of claims after revamping its application software, the Ministry of Labour and Employment said in a release on Friday.
The new software is being developed in consultation with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC). In recent times, the organisation has taken several reforms to ease pensioners and employees. As part of the reforms, the EPFO has automated the claim settlement and reduced the rejections of claims.
For speedy disposal of claims, auto settlement of advances up to 1 Lakh for illness, education, marriage and housing has been implemented by EPFO. About 25 Lakhs advance claims have been settled on auto mode, as per the Ministry statement. Sumita Dawra, Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India held a review meeting on these reforms within the organisation on June 13, 2024.
The meeting was attended by Neelam Shami Rao, CPFC and other senior officers of the Ministry of Labour and Employment and EPFO. The statement added, while elaborating on the recent reforms undertaken by the EPFO, that more than 50 per cent of the illness claims have been settled till now in auto mode. This has increased claim settlement speed and a large number of them are now being settled within 03 days.
The chequebook/passbook of bank account uploads for the KYC Aadhaar-linked accounts of members have been dispensed with, thus eliminating the scrutiny requirement for almost 13 lakh claims in the last month. EPFO has also reduced and rationalised the remarks for easy comprehension by the members for the return of incomplete cases and rejection of ineligible cases, the statement read.
The number of auto transfers generated has also increased threefold with the numbers increasing from 02 Lakh on April 24 to 06 Lakh in May 2024, as per the Ministry release. The review meeting highlighted the need of the expansion of social security and new initiatives for ease of living and ease of business. The operational reforms in Litigation Management and Audit were also discussed during the meeting.
