EPFO reduces claim settlement period to 10 days

In July 2015, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had reduced the timeline for settling various claims to 20 day to improve the service delivery for its over four crore subscribers. The body has launched the online claim settlement facility on 1 May 2017.

It has planned to eventually settle claims of all Aadhaar and bank account seeded EPF accounts within three hours of receipt of an application.

“The timeline in case of claim settlements is 10 days and 15 days in case of grievance redressal management,” an EPFO statement said.

These are new provisions in the EPFO’s Citizens’ Charter 2017 launched in Bangalore today by labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya. It said the Charter is an attempt to bring transparency and accountability on the part of EPFO and make service delivery system and grievance redressal mechanism more efficient.

The EPFO e-court Management System has also been launched which is in tune with the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of digital India. The objective of the project is a transparent and electronic case management system which will cater to aspirations of all stakeholders – the employers, the employees, litigants and CBT. It is a step towards paperless court system wherein court procedure of EPF & MP Act, 1952 and EPFAT (tribunal) will take place in a digital environment.

Further, in order to facilitate easy access to the tribunal, automated messages will be sent to the litigants on their registered mobile numbers on the status of their cases. The stakeholders can also track the individual cases online, it said.

Now the parties can file all their paper/evidence/ documents online and all the details alongwith status can be accessed online. Updation is an important part of e-court management system in which digital case record will create a digital database which can be utilised to generate meaningful and accurate reports, it said.