Central pension disbursal system to be approved in the upcoming meeting of EPFO

11 Jul 2022 , 10:57 AM

The central pension disbursal system plan will be discussed and approved by the retirement fund body EPFO at its meeting on July 29 and 30. This would open the door for the benefit to be credited to the bank accounts of more than 73 lakh retirees in India at once. 

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) now has approximately 138 regional offices that each individually distributes pensions to recipients in their area. Consequently, the pensioners of various regional offices get their pensions at various times or days.

The Central Board of Trustees (CBT), the EPFO’s highest decision-making body, will be presented with a proposal for the establishment of a central pension disbursal system at a meeting scheduled for July 29 and 30, a source told PTI. The source said that the pension will be paid out using a single database of more than 138 regional offices across the nation, making it easier to credit the payment into the bank accounts of more than 73 lakh recipients at once.

According to the source, this is why retirees across the nation receive their payments on various days or at different times since each regional office serves the seniors in its own area. The proposal for C-DAC to establish centralised IT-enabled systems was authorized by the trustees during the CBT’s 229th meeting, which was held on November 20, 2021.

After the meeting, the field capabilities will gradually shift to a central database, enabling easier operations and better service delivery, the labor ministry had indicated in a statement. The unified system will make it easier to consolidate and de-duplicate any member’s PF accounts. It stated that it will eliminate the obligation for a transfer of accounts when changing jobs.

According to the source, the CBT will also evaluate and accept a proposal to permit subscribers who have contributed for fewer than six months to withdraw contributions from pension accounts. Only subscribers who have made contributions for six months to ten years or longer are now allowed to withdraw money from their pension accounts.