New Delhi : EPFO has asked banks not to deny monthly pension to people for want of biometric national ID, Aadhaar, and said that alternate means for identification should be used if needed.
The Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), in a circular to all heads of pension disbursing banks and postal services, listed out alternate mechanism of handling pensioners who do not possess Aadhaar or those whose identity cannot be authenticated due to wear out of finger print. It asked banks to ensure that pensioners are facilitated for Aadhaar enrolment and a paper life certificate is accepted, in place of a digitally generated one, for pensioners who have enrolled for Aadhaar.
For those whose finger print wear out has made authentication difficult, banks will make provisions for IRIS scanner along with the fingerprint scanner in bank branches, it said. EPFO said the agreement it signed with banks for disbursement of pension lays down the duties and responsibilities of banks including collection of Life Certificate/Non-re-marriage certificate in November every month from pensioners and forwarding the same to EPFO field offices for necessary action.
Concerned branches of the banks were doing this by collecting Life Certificate in paper form. But since 2016, the Life Certificates are being obtained from the pensioners digitally as Jeevan Pramaan in place of the Life Certificate in paper form being submitted by the pensioners to the bank earlier. Submission of Jeevan Pramaan digitally has been facilitated through UMANG APP in the mobile phones also. “Some complaints have been received from pensioners who are being turned away and denied pensions for want of Aadhaar or Aadhaar fingerprint authentication not being successful due to poor fingerprint of the beneficiary or due to network/ connectivity or other technical reasons. Because of this, pensioners are not able to get and submit Jeevan Pramaan,” the circular said.