JOIN US The Employees Provident Fund Organisation is all set to notify a draft order next week which will make the Universal Account Number (UAN) compulsory for all organisations covered under the Employees Provident Fund Scheme.
The organisations will be given time till August 25 to complete the formalities after which all the claims pertaining to provident fund of the employees will only be settled online using the UAN number.
This was announced by the Central Provident Fund Commissioner K K Jalan, who was in the City to conduct meetings with the employers. He met over 150 employers on Friday and discussed possible issues that could crop up while shifting the workload from manual to online. He said the new order is a paradigm shift in the way provident fund related work was carried out.
“For the first time, the EPFO will deal directly with employees instead of through
employers. The UAN was launched in October 2014 as a voluntary scheme. But we have directions from the government now to make it mandatory,” he said. Under the new order, employers will have to get a declaration under Form 11 from all employees joining the company within a month’s time and upload the same on the UAN portal within 25 days of close of each month.
The UAN will be shared with all existing employees who are members of the fund within 15 days of being generated and an acknowledgment will be obtained. Know your Customer (KYC) details like bank account numbers, PAN, Aadhar numbers will also have to be uploaded within a month of the receipt of the UAN and Aadhar numbers then provided will have to be uploaded to the UAN portal within 15 days according to the new rules.
“The deadline for completing the formalities is August 25 after which action will be taken under the powers given to us by the Employees Provident Funds Scheme, 1952, and other applicable laws for failure to comply with the order,” said Jalan. The EPFO will henceforth call its Bhavishya Nidhi Adalat as “Nidhi Aapke Nikat.” Jalan said the new “PF Near You” exercise will have many features aimed at making the entire mechanism more accessible to those with grievances.
“In other words, EPFO will move away from a pure grievances redressal centered approach as seen before to a more broad-based and participatory approach. We will not only redress grievances but also invite suggestions, sensitise stakeholders and also provide a platform for employers to vent their grievances as well,” Jalan said.
The PF Near You meetings will be held on the 10th of every month from July 2015 or on the next working day if the 10th is a holiday. The programme will be held in every regional/sub regional office and will be presided over by the officer-in-charge or the next senior most officer. Subscribers can attend the10:30 AM to 1:00 PM slot, employers can attend the 3 pm to 4 pm slot while exempted establishments located within the jurisdiction can attend the 4 pm to 5 pm slot, a statement by the EPFO said.