By TIOLNews Service:

NEW DELHI, DEC 08, 2016: A sub-committee of Central Board of Trustees, EPF met on Nov 07, 2016, wherein it was noted that the coverage of contract workers increased from 89.25 lakh to 1.02 crore. The Committee further noted that large number of contact workers in the country still remain deprived of PF benefits. This is because many Central Government Departments/ Organizations do not come under the purview of the EPF and MP Act, 1952. Considering the social security as the basic right of all workers, it decided to recommend to the Government of India for cancellation of exclusion to such categories, including Indian Railways.

The Committee noted that transfer of accounts of contract workers is now possible through Universal Account Number (UAN). It was decided to encourage contract workers to make full use of Aadhaar seeded UAN, upon change of every employment for consolidating their EPF money. The Committee also recommended to the Government to consider increase in the wage ceiling under EPFO to Rs. 25,000 per month from the existing Rs. 15,000 per month.

Zonal review meeting of Additional Central P.F. Commissioners was held on Nov 26, 2016. All Zonal Addl. PF Commissioners were advised to take up with the State Government for further asking State PSUs, State Corporations, State Government Departments, State PWDs etc. to ensure coverage of all contract workers. With Aadhaar backed UAN, a number of direct services to EPF members are made available like submission of claim directly with EPFO without employer's attestation. At present, out of 8.11 cores UAN issued by EPFO, 2.01 crore Aadhaar numbers of members have been uploaded in UAN database. For creating awareness on benefits of Aadhaar seeding with UAN, EPFO will conduct country wide awareness programme so as to ensure seeding of all UAN with Aadhaar by December end. Beginning December, ECR version 2.0 will be launched. This will further facilitate auto transfer of UAN linked accounts.

An enduring issue with EPFO, has been enrolment of all eligible workers. At present, EPFO has 4 crore contributing workers. EPFO proposes to launch a six months enrolment campaign during Jan 01, 2017 to June 30, 2017 to enroll all the eligible workers. This campaign will also focus on linking UAN to Aadhaar. The last date of submission of life certificate by pensioners under Employees' Pension Scheme, 1995 has been extended upto Jan 15, 2017. There are around 54 lakh pensioners with EPFO. EPFO is focusing its attention on next phase of computerization so that services to members, pensioners and establishments can be made seamless and digitized. The field offices' data base is being centralized to operate from the central computing facility. Consolidation of field offices database commenced in October and so far 26 offices of EPFO have migrated to the consolidated database of the Central Data Centre. The computerization reforms includes facilitating submission of online claims as well as Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana (PMRPY). ECR 2.0, UAN 2.0 and PMRPY services will be made operational from December 2016.

A stakeholder engagement meeting from industry was held on Nov 29, 2016. Representatives from PHDCCI, CII, ASSOCHAM and FICCI attended the meeting. In the meeting, the new version of Electronic-challan-cum Return (ECR 2.0) and UAN 2.0 were explained and the need of enrolment of all eligible workers with EPFO and linking of UAN with Aadhaar was impressed. The representatives received the idea well. The Executive Committee, CBT, EPF was reconstituted on Nov 24, 2016. Secretary, Government of India, Ministry of Labour & Employment is the Chairperson of the Executive Committee. The 87th meeting of the Executive Committee, CBT, EPF is scheduled to held on Dec 12, 2016. EPFO settled 18,501 grievances during the month leaving 3,153 pending. Out of the pending grievances, 82% were pending for less than 07 days.