One may soon be able to avail automatic transfer of provident fund accounts on switching jobs and get provident fund money within a single day of filing the claim.
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This will be a part of the public campaign that Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will soon rollout to dissuade employees from closing their PF accounts.
“We want to make systems in such a manner that employees needn’t close their provident fund accounts before retirement,” EPFO Central Provident Fund Commissioner V.P. Joy told The Hindu. “ We will ensure subscribers get large number of benefits; that they receive the money whenever required for emergency purposes and get PF money credited into their bank accounts within one day of making the claim. Our goal is to ensure employees do not go for PF account closure.”
He said 70% of total 1.25 crore annual claims received by the PF department are related to premature closure of provident fund accounts.
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Last year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Union Budget speech announced a move to bar employees from withdrawing their provident fund corpus before the retirement age of 58 years. However, the proposal drew ire of workers and protest by garment sector workers turned violent in Bengaluru leading to withdrawal rollback of the proposed norms.
“We do not want to force employees to not go for account closure. We have done a detailed analysis of the reasons why people close their PF accounts instead of transferring them while switching jobs,” Mr. Joy said.
Mr. Joy has written to all private banks to allow companies to make statutory provident fund contributions to the EPFO through their banks. “This will enable us to dispatch PF claims within one day otherwise it takes four days to do so at present. We aim to tie up with all the banks,” the EPFO chief said.