Govt reduces claims settlement period by EPFO to 20 days

New Delhi: The government has reduced the stipulated period for settlement of various claims like PF withdrawal, pension and insurance by the retirement fund body EPFO to 20 days from the existing 30 days.

"The government brought out amendments to Para 72(7) of the Employees' Provident Fund Scheme, 1952, Para 17-A of the Employees' Pension Scheme, 1995 and Para 24 (4) of the Employees' Deposit linked Insurance Scheme, 1976 and thereby reduced the periodicity of settlement of PF, pension and insurance claims from existing 30 days to 20 days," says an Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's (EPFO) office order.

According to the order, the Labour Ministry had notified the changes to the three schemes for the purpose on July 2.

The EPFO has been working for the past few years to reduce the claim settlement period. Its ultimate target is to settle all types of claims within three days from receipt of application in future through a massive digitisation programme.

The body is in the process of making operational the portable or universal PF account number of its subscribers.

It had provided over four crore UANs to its subscribers last year in July. At present, around 60 lakh subscribers have activated their UAN.

The body had settled 1.29 crore claims in 2014-15, of which more than 90 percent were disposed off within 20 days.

EPFO has settled 11.06 lakh claims in June, 38 percent of these were settled within 3 days and 76 percent within 10 days.

The cumulative figure regarding claim settlement for the current fiscal (from April-June 2015) stood at 33.35 lakh claims, out of which 43 percent were settled within 3 days.

As many as 79 percent of the claims were settled within 10 days.