During the current fiscal, till the month the Organisation settled more than 50 lakh claims out of which 97% was settled within 30 days as mandated by the scheme. In the month of August alone, 10.98 lakh claims were settled and the percentage of claims settled within the above said mandated time-limit was 98.90%. Importantly, as a result of constant up-gradation in the standards of service delivery, 39% of the settled claims were settled in a mere 3 days while more than 73% were settled within 3 days. Reduction of the time period in settling claims has always been a priority area for the Organisation and commendable progress has been made in the recent past.
It was also noted that the number of establishments registered on the ECR portal (electronic challan cum return) has crossed 4.76 lakhs and the number of active members has touched 4.11 crores. It is estimated that more than 4000 establishments registered themselves on the ECR portal in the month of August. In August 2013, the Organisation saw Rs. 5961 crores coming in as remittances into its accounts.
As a part of ongoing process for revamping its services, the organisation has focused on online transfer application and it is expected that the same would be launched very soon. The application makes use of digital signatures of employer to authenticate the claims submitted online by the employees. To this end, the process of registration of digital signature has been initiated and till August 2013, more than 9000 number of digital signatures were registered by the establishments from across the country.
Customer satisfaction has been a constant focus area in the recent months and a special drive for redress of grievances had been initiated. As a result of these concentrated efforts which included direct monitoring by the Central PF Commissioner, the Organisation was able to redress 27056 number of complaints in the month of August 2013 alone. In comparison, the total no. of grievances received in the month was only 16160. The total no. of grievances pending by August end for the entire organisation was 8791 compared to 19788 pending at July end. It is noteworthy that a record number of 47722 grievances were settled in the last two months. Equally so is the fact that 104 field offices out of a total of 120 field offices of the Organisation have not even a single case of grievance pending for more than 30 days.
Regarding the issue of avoidance of payment of Social Security contributions in the case of Indian employees covered under the Act and posted abroad, Sh.K.K.Jalan, Central Provident Fund Commissioner (CPFC) noted that Social Security agreements have been signed with 17 countries and 9 of them have been operationalised.In a move that would have an impact on such workers, it has been decided that the process of issue of Certificate of Coverage(CoC) necessary for availing the benefits have been decentralised. Hence forth, the CoCs can be obtained from the Field Office concerned instead of Head Office as was the case earlier. It was noted that 21566 CoCs were issued till the month of August. Out of this,770 CoCs were issued in the month itself.
