Over the past few years, the EPFO has been working to improve its claim settlement period trying to bring it within the mandated one month period.
Provident fund claims are set to get resolved faster with the government now reducing the statutory claim period to 20 days from the earlier time period of 30 days.
The facility, which follows a government order, would also be available to subscribers of the Employees™ Pension Scheme and the Employees™ Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme. It would impact all transfers and withdrawals by subscribers from the EPFO, the EPS and the EDLI, mandating that they now get resolved within a 20 day time span.
The Government of India brought out amendments to Para 72(7) of the Employees™ Provident Fund Scheme, 1952, Para 17-A of the Employees™ Pension Scheme, 1995 and Para 24 (4) of the Employees™ Deposit-linked Insurance Scheme, 1976 and thereby, reduced the periodicity of settlement of PF, pension and insurance claims from existing 30 days to 20 days.
Over the past few years, the EPFO has been working to improve its claim settlement period trying to bring it within the mandated one month period, although claims of many subscribers continue to languish and face delays.
We have been regularly monitoring the field offices on settlement of claims to ensure that all claims are settled within the mandatory 30 day period. Most claims now get settled in a period less than this, so a decision was taken to reduce the mandatory time period.
Data released by the EPFO reveals that it settled 11.06 lakh claims in the month (June). 38 per cent of these were settled within 3 days and 76 per cent within 10 days.
