Regional EPFO begins probe

Nikhil Bhardwaj

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 7

The regional Employees Provident Fund office has initiated judicial inquiries against 134 business establishments, attached 203 bank accounts and levied penalties on 439 business units for failing to comply with the Employees Provident Fund & Miscellaneous Provisions (EPF&MP) Act.

These facts come to the fore during the release of the yearly performance of the regional EPFO for the financial year 2014-15.

Apart from this, noose was also tightened around several industrial unit defaulters which were not transferring the mandatory Employees Provident Fund (EPF) of their employees.

Regional PF Commissioner Dhiraj Gupta said, “For failing to comply with the provisions of the EPF Act, 203 bank accounts were attached through which around Rs 69.27 lakh was recovered, two immoveable properties were also attached which made the defaulters to shell out Rs 0.94 lakh and one defaulter owner of a business unit was also arrested which made him to pay Rs 9.80 lakh.” He added the above coercive action was taken against the defaulters in the financial year.

About judicial probes, a PF official said as many as 134 such inquiries under Section 7A of the EPF Act were initiated and later on the conclusion of these inquires, the government’s exchequer was made richer by Rs 226 lakh. Apart from this, the penalty levied under Section 14B of the EPF Act for the late payment of the EPF, PF department got Rs 367.31 lakh in a financial year. Also, as many as 11 prosecutions were also filed in the court, a PF official said, adding that nine complaints under Section 406 409 of the IPC were also filed with the police stations for the required action against the defaulters.

61,787 PF claims settledin a year

As per the yearly report of the EPFO, it settled as many as 61,787 PF claims of which 55,163 were settled within three days, while the remaining 6,624 were settled within four to 10 days. Only 5.5 per cent of the PF claims were rejected by the EPFO for the lack of documentations or other non-fulfilled formalities. The PF department has paid 98.95 per cent of the EPF payments through National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) scheme, directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

New members enrolled under the EPF scheme during the financial year stand around 90,603.

“Today the expectation of the people has increased many times. We cannot continue to work as we used to work earlier. Earlier, the PF claims were settled in 30 days, but now 90 per cent of the claims are settled in three days and 100 per cent in 10 days. In the last financial year, we took some tough actions to send the message that we will not tolerate the violation of the Provisions of EPF&MP Act. Simultaneously, we also conducted many seminars and workshops for both employers and employees in all four districts under my jurisdiction to make them aware about their rights and duties under provisions of the EPF Act,” PF Commissioner Gupta said.