Towards a customer-friendly PF office

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JUNE 28. The Centre today announced modernisation plans for the much maligned Employees' Provident Fund Organisation to bring relief to 2.4 crore members. The EPFO would now be transformed into a customer-friendly organisation to help members get their claims settled within two to three days.

A comprehensive plan titled ``Re-inventing EPF-India'' was announced by the Union Labour Minister, Dr.Satyanarayan Jatiya, at a press briefing here today. The plan seeks to strategically reposition the EPF as a frontline provider of Provident Fund, pension and other old age income security.

``The objective of the plan is to enable a customer-centric geometric growth in the spread and reach of old age income security to the working class and also ensure world class standards of quality, timeliness and efficiency,'' the Minister told mediapersons.

On the implememtation of such an ambitious plan, Dr.Jatiya said the immediate goal was to establish a system that would enable a worker to access his or her account current balance in any of the 267 EPF outlets in the country. The idea is to enable any worker submit a claim at any of the outlets, irrespective of where he or she is currently or last employed, and get it settled within 2-3 days.

The old age income security protection is at present available to 26 million people which is ten per cent of the estimated working class population.

Asked about the time frame, the Labour Minister said, the project had passed the planning mode and was now in the implementation mode. In the first phase, it would be implemented across six clusters at Indore, Kota, Gurgaon, Patna, Mangalore and Hyderabad by October 2001 and elsewhere by August 2004.

In the next three months, the process of registration is expected to start. This, Dr.Jatiya said, ``will involve issuance of a nationally unique identity number to every EPF member along with a `smart card' that will carry the employee's profile and employment details, the employee's identification details and passbook.''

The unique number - SSN (Social Security Number) - would remain employee-specific regardless of the identitty of the

employer and regardless of any change in employment. This has been decided to enable participation of even casual and migrant workers so as to help them access their account from any location.

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