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EPFO has settled 1.19 crore claims so far in this fiscal

Retirement fund body EPFO has settled 1.19 crore claims in the current fiscal year so far.

“The organisation has settled 10.71 lakh claims out of which 75 per cent were settled within 10 days and 95 per cent within 20 days. With this, EPFO has settled 1.19 crore claims in the current fiscal,” Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) said in a release on Wednesday.

“The progressive reduction in the time taken for settlement signifies EPFO’s readiness to adhere to the new timeline of settling claims within a maximum time of 20 days, which is expected to be notified shortly,” said K K Jalan Central PF Commissioner while reviewing the progress of EPFO for the month of February.

EPFO has also reduced administrative charges for EPF schemes to 0.85 per cent of the wages from 1.10 per cent. However, the minimum charges payable has been fixed at Rs 75 per month for every non-functional establishment having no contributory member and Rs 500 per month per establishment for other establishments.

The minimum administrative charges for Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme has been fixed at Rs 25 per month for every non-functional establishment having no contributory member and Rs 200 per month per establishment for others. The revised charges shall be effective from January 1, 2015. An online help desk for have also been set up. The online desk will help trace users their inoperative accounts and take further action to transfer or withdraw it.

Meanwhile, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) gave an average interest of 8.67 per cent to its account holders in three years up to 2014-15. The rate of interest during 2014-15 has been declared at 8.75 per cent, 8.75 per cent in 2013-14 and 8.50 per cent during 2012-13, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in the Parliament on Wednesday.

In the current financial year up to December 2014, EPFO invested a total of 3.59 lakh crore in various schemes, he added. Similarly, EPFO invested Rs 3.25 lakh crore in 2013-14, Rs 3.77 lakh crore in 2012-13 and Rs 2.37 lakh crore in 2011-12, the Minister said. “The government prescribes investment pattern for investments of EPFO corpus. Presently, EPFO is following pattern of investment, 2013 notified by Ministry of Labour & Employment on November 21, 2013,” Dattatreya said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

He said the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) and Employees Provident Fund (EPF) in a meeting held in February this year relaxed investment guidelines with an objective to increase the earnings of the fund without compromising with safety and security of the fund.

Govt launches Short Code SMS services for EPFO members
Bandaru Dattatreya, Hon’ble Minister of State for Labour & Employment (Independent Charge) has launched EPFO’s Short Code SMS services for the members of EPFO during the 206th meeting of CBT(EPF) held on Wednesday.

During the year 2014, EPFO had launched the UAN programme wherein a Universal Account Number was allotted to all the members and different services such as passbook, monthly SMS of contributions were provided on its activation at EPFO’s UAN portal.

The Short Code SMS service will be available to UAN activated members. In this facility the member will send an SMS in predefined format from his/her mobile number registered during UAN activation.

The EPFO on receipt of such SMS will send the members details available with EPFO along with details of KYC seeded, Last Contribution and Total PF Balance.

The Members has been given an option to know the details in 10 different Indian languages namely English, Hindi, Telugu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali. This facility is envisaged to ease the members in knowing their details along with contribution and
PF Balance.

... Forms panel to consider housing scheme

Retirement fund body EPFO has formed a six-member expert panel to consider the proposal of facilitating housing to its subscribers. “The expert committee will consider the proposal for facilitating housing to subscribers of Employees’ Pension Fund and other issues,” EPFO said in a statement. The committee, to be chaired by Manish Gupta, will submit its report within a month.

Over 70 per cent EPFO subscribers’ basic wages are less than Rs 15,000 per month.
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