The Union Labour Ministry is planning to introduce Group Insurance Housing Scheme with an objective to provide housing to all homeless subscribers of the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) scheme by 2022.
Under the scheme, the EPF subscribers, employees of private organisations, would be allowed to withdraw 90 per cent of the EPF amount and would also be arranged loans with lower interest rates, Union Minister for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya stated here on Monday.
Speaking after inaugurating the new Regional Office of EPFO at Kukatpally, the upgraded sub-regional office, Mr. Dattatreya stated that the Centre had introduced a slew of worker-friendly measures since 2014 as part of better welfare of the community.
The Union Minister stated that over 4 lakh workers/employees of 1.4 lakh employers in Telangana were newly enrolled under the EPF scheme from January 1 to March 31 this year as part of the amnesty scheme taken up by the ministry to bring the non-subscribers into the EPF fold. Telangana stood first in the country in such enrolment, he noted.
By dividing the zonal office for Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha States here the ministry had set up separate offices for three States to serve the EPF members better.
He reiterated that the government had also taken a decision to increase the investment of EPFO funds in the stock markets from the existing 10% to 15% so that more benefits could be extended to the members.
He noted that the annual return on the investment so far had increased from 6.5% to 13%.
Stating that there were 55 lakh subscribers under EPF in Telangana, Mr. Dattatreya said 24 lakh of them had already activated their Universal Account Numbers (UAN) and 11 lakh had linked their PF accounts with their Aadhaar numbers.
On the new Regional Office, the Union Minister said it was serving 15 lakh PF subscribers from 8,000 organisations and had also 27,000 pensioners. Foundation for the own building would be laid soon and requested the State Government to process the formalities for the land identified at the earliest. They had plans to move into own premises in 18 months, he added.
Additional Central PF Commissioner K.V. Sarveswaran, Regional PF Commissioner K. Ravindra Kumar, Malkajgiri MP Ch. Malla Reddy and others attended.
