EPFO advises members against fully withdrawing provident fund

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 12

Retirement fund body EPFO today advised subscribers not to completely withdraw funds for petty reasons, saying they will lose out on the social security benefits (read pension) that come only when continuity is maintained. Call it ignorance or lack of trust, provident fund subscribers in the region, especially below the age of 30 years, are withdrawing money from their provident fund accounts instead of transferring it to their new employers.

The region comprising Chandigarh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, has 61,192 enrolled establishments, with total 77.47 lakh subscribers. As far as regular contributing members are concerned, it is only 10.11 lakh.

“While processing claims, we came to learn that people below 30 years of age are withdrawing provident fund as well as EPS fund (Employees Pension Scheme) especially when they have not attained 10 years of service for reasons like buying an automobile etc. They don’t know that by doing this, they can lose their social benefits. The frequent withdrawals from provident fund by the members is detrimental not only to the member but it also deprives his family of various associated covers such as family pension etc.,” said V Ranganath, acting Additional Central Provident Fund Commissioner (Chandigarh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh), Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).

The subscriber is allowed to withdraw the EPS amount if the service period is less than 10 years. The part withdrawal of the fund by the members from his/her PF account does not impact the membership.

He said, “People should not treat it as a bank account. They should look at long-term perspective and withdraw money only if they have genuine need.”

Ranganath also added that people should know that their money is safe with EPFO. “We have undertaken certain IT initiatives to bring transparency. A subscriber can see his contribution on a real-time basis. Besides, we have introduced measures to bring ease of doing business by way of a highly interactive portal of the organisation and also other third party integrations that have been carried out, such as mobile-based “UMANG” application and other collaborative measures such as customer service centres and capturing of digital life certificate via Jeevan Parmaan etc.”