PremiumEnding confusion for lakhs of formal sector workers, the employees provident fund organisation (EPFO) Tuesday deferred the mandatory matching of Aadhaar details with employees’ records for monthly statutory EPF payment, days after an affiliate body of RSS wrote to labour ministry to reconsider its implementation.
As per the previous direction, EPFO was insisting for validating Aadhaar, means unless all details like name, date of birth, gender matches, it was not allowing to pay the monthly EPF contributions. The move had prevented lakhs of workers especially low paid formal sector employees due to the mismatch of record.
EPFO said in a circular that the directive on Aadhaar matching will not happen from 1 June as was announced earlier but from 1 September. It asked all its field offices to ensure that employers are ready to implement the decision from 1 Sept.
The mandatory matching of Aadhaar with employee details has been preventing lakhs of workers from paying monthly EPFO dues, trade union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said Saturday. The union wrote to the union labour minister to reconsider the newly notified Aadhaar validation rule for paying EPFO contributions.
The trade union body had urged the ministry that employers should be allowed to submit EPF dues by furnishing only the Aadhaar number, without insisting on matching of the other details. BMS had written that the provision that came into effect 1 June may lead to “misappropriation of funds deducted from employees" and the break in contribution could hamper pension and insurance eligibility of workers.
EPFO has almost 60 million active subscribers and it manages a retirement corpus of almost Rs. 14 trillion.
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