Ludhiana EPFO assures pension to all staff on retirement day

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, April 29

If it was ‘Prayaas’ earlier, now it is ‘Vishwas’. In a first, the Ludhiana Regional Commissionerate of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on Friday launched the ‘Vishwas’ initiative to give assured pensions to all the employees on the day of their retirement itself.

Officialspeak

All EPFO offices in the country have been asked to find ways and means to raise levels of our service qualities and meet global standards. Pension should be given to all EPF members on their day of retirement itself so that they don’t have to face any problems in settlement of their pension claim post retirement. — Neelam Shammi Rao, Central PF Commissioner

This is an effort to develop the ‘Vishwas’ (trust) among our EPF members for availing EPFO services. This ‘Prayaas’ to ‘Vishwas’ will be replicated across Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh zone by August to commemorate the ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’. — Kumar Rohit, Additional Central PF Commissioner, Punjab

We have come up with an ambitious ‘Vishwas’ scheme, which involves the active cooperation from employers in form of advance contribution of one month for retiring employees and also may be we require some changes at our application software level to make this universal. — Dheeraj Gupta, Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-1, Ludhiana

It followed the nationwide ‘Prayaas’ drive, under which all the EPFOs in the country were having a trial run to disburse pensions to their registered members on the last day of their service since last year.

Following the successful trial run, the Ludhiana EPFO became the country’s first regional headquarters to launch the ‘Vishwas’ initiative under which all the registered employees will be assured to get their pension on the day of their superannuation.

Under the drive, which will soon be replicated across all the EPFO centres in the country, all 91 registered employees of the Ludhiana region, who are retiring this month, were handed over the pension payment orders (PPOs) on the last day of their service at a state-level function held here this evening.

The Additional Central PF Commissioner, Punjab, Kumar Rohit, presided over the function.

“All EPF members will now be assured to get pension on their retirement day like other government employees,” the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-I (RPFC), Dheeraj Gupta, told The Tribune.

He said the Ludhiana EPFO has made a radical shift in approach from ‘Prayaas’ to ‘Vishwas’ as now not only a few and selected cases but a universal approach will be adopted under the new initiative to disburse pension on the date of superannuation.

This will help the employees in getting their pension automatically without any hassle on their last day of service. Earlier, the private employees had to face a lot of trouble to get their pension post retirement. They had to visit the regional PF offices after superannuation with their pension papers besides making rounds of their employers to get all the pension-related documents.

In 2021, the EPFO had undertaken the ‘Prayaas’ initiative to release pension on the day of superannuation to the employees enrolled with the EPFO. Under that scheme, the PPOs were given to a few retiring members on their day of retirement, who completed all their paperwork.

Under the ‘Vishwas’ initiative, the Ludhiana EPFO office will handhold all the retiring EPF members two months prior to their superannuation and will coordinate with their establishments to get all the paperwork completed, which may include any KYC correction, merger of previous service, multiple UAN issue or any other issue, within timeline to enable EPF office to release their pension on their date of retirement.

For this purpose, a ‘Prayaas’ nodal team under RPFC-2-level officers was constituted in March in the Ludhiana EPFO office under the overall supervision of the RPFC-1, which included one official each from pension, accounts, technical and compliance departments.

“This team worked as a single window for all retiring EPF members to resolve all their issues beforehand. The Additional Central PF Commissioner, Punjab, Kumar Rohit, continuously reviewed the progress and gave go ahead to launch ‘Prayaas’ pilot project in Ludhiana. This will facilitate the employees with the pension order on the day of retirement by submitting pension papers with the company a few days before retirement,” Gupta divulged.

The CMC Director, Dr William Bhatti, and the RPFC-1, Chandigarh, PPS Mengi, were also present while all PF officers from Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat regions joined the event virtually.

Benefits

The biggest benefit of the ‘Vishwas’ scheme will be to disburse the pension to the Employee Provident Scheme (EPS) subscribers on the retirement day. The employees can easily and quickly get their pension on the last day of service by submitting the pension papers with the EPFO.

It will save the employees’ time as they and their family members do not have to wait and follow up with the PF or company to clear their dues and get the pension.

The retired employees need not visit the PF office and the company to complete the documentation process for pension withdrawal.

The employees can enjoy retired life with more dignity by receiving their pension on the same day of retirement.

The employees do not have to deal with the lengthy documentation processes and waiting period to receive their pension after completing the documentation process.

They will be at par with government employees who get pension on their day of retirement.

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