EPFO settles 10.68 lakh PF claims in September

New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO settled 10.68 lakh claims in September and of these over 97 percent were settled within mandated time of 20 days.

"During the month, 10.68 lakh claims were settled and out of the same, an overwhelming 97.43 percent were settled within the newly mandated time of 20 days," Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) said in a release Friday.

EPFO has brought down the period of claim settlement to 20 days from 30 days earlier.

"The total settlement of claims for the first half of the financial year (April-September) reached 66.22 lakh. The service standard delivery has improved by leaps and bounds and as a result more than 41 per cent of the settlement happened in just 3 days," it added.

Likewise, 80 percent of the claims were settled within 10 days, EPFO said.

Also the retirement fund body said that instructions have been issued for making payment using NEFT facility of banks to ensure safe, secure and quick delivery of the insurance amount to the beneficiary.

"With this, in all the three schemes run by EPFO i.e. EPF, EPS and EDLI, the payments are made to the beneficiary through e-mode," said the release.

Also, 19,000 grievances were resolved during the month and less than 3,000 grievances were left pending in all the field offices of the organisation, it added.

"Further, it was directed that the timeline of seven days for resolution of grievances should be adopted by field offices to the extent possible."

EPFO also said that the EPF benefits will be extended to certain class of establishments like those financed wholly by grants-in-aid of central or state government, public religious charitable trusts or endowments including places of worship.

Further, to facilitate small establishments in fulfilling the procedural requirements relating to the Universal Account Number (UAN) project, EFPO has decided that the field offices of EPFO will assist such small establishments to digitally authenticate their KYC details using the digital signature available with the field offices.

"This is expected to provide a major relief to small employers as the requirement of having their own digital signature for authenticating KYC details of their employees now longer exists," the release added.