The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has pulled up field offices for their tardiness and directed them to ensure timely credit of contributions into members’ accounts, especially in cases where an employer is under investigation and dues have been recovered.
This directive comes in the wake of a number of complaints from subscribers over delay in credit of contributions into their accounts.
The EPFO has highlighted procedural gaps and said that even in cases where recovery of the assessed dues were made, they were not credited in a timely manner to members’ accounts. “Inordinate delay in credit of contributions to members’ accounts even after recovery of dues assessed under Section 7A has been received as a grievance on various occasions and the same has been noted with concern at the head office. While investigating the root cause of these grievances, certain procedural gaps have been identified,” the EPFO said in a sternly worded missive to its field offices.
It has directed field offices to ensure timely reconciliation of the challans and ensure that the levy of interest and damages is completed in a month. It has also asked for a fortnightly progress report to ensure that its guidelines are followed and contributions are credited to members’ accounts at the earliest.
Section 7A of the EPF and Miscellaneous Provisions Act empowers the PF officers to initiate inquiries to assess pending PF contributions with employers. This typically happens when the establishment or employer has been deducting the PF contribution from the workers’ salaries but has not been submitting either the partial or full amount with the PF office.
One of the main causes has been delay in reconciliation of the recovered dues with the electronic challan cum return, the EPFO noted. In most cases, the recovery of the assessed dues was done through demand drafts but the corresponding record was entered into the system by the field office. However, the record was then not reconciled with the challan in a timely manner. “This has led to the piling up of grievances of the affected employees and delay in the delivery of justice to the workers causing them financial hardship,” the EPFO said.
Apart from leaving the workers aggrieved, such delay also prevents the systematic calculation of damages and interest. “If such damages and interests were not levied, this would cause immense loss to the Fund,” the EPFO said.
