Rs 263-cr PF claims released during 5 months in Ludhiana

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, September 13

The Employees Provident Fund organisation (EPFO) released claims worth Rs 263.14 crore to beneficiaries in the past five months. The department released this much of amount due to the ongoing pandemic.

Dhiraj Gupta, Provident Fund Commissioner, Ludhiana, told The Tribune that as many as 84,272 claims were received from April 20 to September 7 this year against which Rs 263.14 crore was released to applicants.

“Provident Fund has become a perfect future for the working class. During the Covid times, around 1 lakh people in Ludhiana got their needs met from the PF savings when there was no jobs and salaries. During this period, Ludhiana officials had also processed 10,000 claims as multi location claims of the Gurugram PF office to liquidate the pendency of the Gurugram office. Over 84K claims, except a few, have been settled within seven working days of the receipt of claims,” Gupta said.

Earlier, all applications were received through the online medium as public dealing was curtailed due to coronavirus but people are visiting the office for their routine work.

“The PF Department continued it’s working in the lockdown period through various modes and cleared 100 per cent claims received between April 1 to till September 7.

Gupta said the PF Department emerged as godsend for the salaried class as most of the people were facing financial problems due to the lockdown and many also faced salary cuts.

Besides claims, 1,348 grievances or complaints were also received in the past five months of which 1,334 were redressed and rest of the complaints were pending due to some technical issues, Gupta said.

Ignorance about TDS rules

Provident Fund Commissioner, Ludhiana, Dheeraj Gupta said: “Sometimes due to ignorance of the TDS rules, members. who have worked for less than five years, do not submit 15G and PAN card details along with their Form 19 claims, due to which the PF office has to deduct the TDS amount as per the Income Tax guidelines. To avoid this, the members could update their PAN card details on its KYC portal and get it approved from their employer during their service period so that they do not face any TDS-related issue at the time of withdrawal. It is also clarified that this five-year period for the TDS deduction is counted after leaving non-contributory period (NCP) days.”

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