Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) would discontinue the practice of issuing annual account slips in paper format soon as all the data will be available online, said P.M. Mathew, Additional Central Provident Fund Commissioner (Tamil Nadu and Kerala).
Addressing the inaugural function to issue Form 23 slips for the year 2011-12 at the EPFO Madurai regional office on Friday, he said that the data could be downloaded from the organisation's website by employers and employees. The organisation, he said, was consistently trying to improve its service to employers and employees through computerisation. Now, establishments could upload their annual returns online and soon members could be updated through the website itself.
Terming Madurai Region as among the best in several aspects, he applauded the team here and commended their work. Compliance was also vital to enable EPFO provide better service to its members, he added.
Speaking earlier, V. Vijayakumar, Regional PF Commissioner-I, said that EPFO was changing its approach on the interface with employers and employees. All data were being uploaded into the EPFO's Electronic Challan cum Return (ECR) portal from where they could be downloaded and distributed to employees. A majority of the process was now being done electronically. He appealed to the employers to, henceforth, not seek annual account slips from PF organisations.
The Madurai EPFO Region covered 17,000 establishments in nine districts and issued 26 lakh annual account slips last year. The claim settlement rate was 100 per cent in Nagercoil and 99.9 per cent in Tiruneveli with Madurai recording 85 per cent.
At the national level, the Madurai Region, with 26 lakh account holders, had been ranked second, coming only behind Uttarakhand's capital Dehradun, which had only about six to seven lakh account holders, he added.
Abhishek Kumar, Regional PF Commissioner-II, informed that of the entire 4.70 lakh accounts enrolled in Tamil Nadu and Kerala Zone, Madurai Region alone accounted for 4.30 lakh accounts. The Region was holding regular awareness programmes for employers on the new ‘e-seva' initiative of the EPFO.
