EPFO to disburse pension to over 73 lakh pensioners in one go soon: Report
Premium- The move will pave the way for crediting the benefit into over 73 lakh pensioners' bank accounts in one go across India
The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has announced that it will consider and approve a proposal for setting up a central pension disbursal system in its meeting on July 29 and 30. The move will pave the way for crediting the benefit into over 73 lakh pensioners' bank accounts in one go across India.
Currently, over 138 regional offices of the EPFO disburse pensions to beneficiaries in their region separately and this has led to pensioners of different regional offices receiving their pensions at different times or days.
According to news agency PTI report, "a proposal for setting up a central pension disbursal system will be placed in the EPFO's apex decision making body Central Board of Trustees (CBT) in a meeting scheduled on July 29 and 30."
Notably, the retirement fund body EPFO is a social security organisation responsible for providing a number of benefits to the members covered under the statute of EPF & MP Act, 1952. The body provides provident fund, pension benefits to the members on their retirement and family pension and insurance benefits to their families in case of untimely death of the member.
A source told PTI, the pension would be disbursed using a central database of over 138 regional offices in the country and this will facilitate crediting the benefit into bank accounts of over 73 lakh beneficiaries in one go, explaining that all regional offices cater to the pensioners in their regions separately and that is why pensioners across the country get pension on different times or days.
It is important to note that at the 229th meeting of the CBT held on November 20, 2021, the trustees had approved the proposal for development of centralized IT-enabled systems by C-DAC. Additionally, the labour ministry had said in a statement following the meeting that the field functionalities will move on a central database in a phased manner enabling smoother operations and enhanced service delivery. The labour ministry had also said that the centralized system will facilitate de-duplication and merger of all PF accounts of any member. It will remove the requirement of transfer of account on change of job.
According to the PTI report, “the CBT will consider and approve a proposal to allow withdrawal of deposits from pension accounts by subscribers who have contributed for less than six months. Presently, only those subscribers are eligible for withdrawal from their pension accounts who have contributed for six months to 10 years."
(With inputs from PTI)