EPFO to launch e-inspection system along with a 3-day settlement process

Central Provident Fund Commissioner, Sunil Barthwal, says that the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will soon launch an e-inspection system. This electronic system will simplify the inspection process and will ensure the organisations with open communications will have no physical inspection until necessary. 

The commissioner, at an interactive session organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) last Friday, stated that the EPFO has proposed to amend the provident fund act to reduce the enquiry period to two years maximum. This reduction will curtail harassment faced by the companies to a larger extent. 

Many employees are not able to generate UAN i.e a 12-digit Universal Account Number entitled from EPFO to all employees; this issue is faced due to the mismatch in the database. To address this issue, the EPFO will look at an alternative authentication via the employee database.

The EPFO is working on a three-day settlement process for KYC (Know your customer) compliant beneficiaries who have linked their UAN to Aadhaar, have a bank account and a registered mobile number. This process will help the beneficiaries to receive their settlement money at the earliest.

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The organisation is also planning to set up a society of self-regulating consultants, alike to ICAI (The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India), to curb misuse and corruption.

The CII release stated, “In a significant announcement for the industry he proposed to decriminalise defaulters and treat the cases as economic offences”.

This move will help the government to fasten the settlement of defaulter’s cases, where the level of prosecution will reduce and the defaulters will have to pay penalties or fines for any offences under the act. 

EPFO officers, in the release, stated that the process of claim has grown from offline filing to digital and app-based platform and the next phase of advancement will be based on a big data analytics platform that utilises artificial intelligence and machine learning to trigger all activities.