)
Employees Provident Fund Organisation which is to roll out its online transfer facility this month, has also become accessible to subscribers who have any grievances.
Subscribers who have a complaint can now directly dial up the provident fund office not just in their region but to the head office in Delhi, and the aggrieved member might just end up sharing his woes with none other than the Chief Provident Fund Commissioner himself.
CPFO KK Jalan has declared grievance redressal top priority work in the organisation and he alongwith other top officials in the EPFO are now taking out time to respond to callers on specific grievances. Between them they settled 100 of the 183 grievances the head office received last month, he says showing data.
About 20,668 grievances were disposed of last month in the various regional offices as compared to 13,414 which is the average for preceding three months. Jalan said that grievances are being accorded the top most priority and appropriate instructions have been issued to all field officials. Direct monitoring of grievances from the head office of EPFO is also done. The internet enabled EPF internet Grievance Management System has also been reactivated and as on date more that 96% of the grievances registered through the portal have been addressed.
The EPFO which is under pressure from the Finance Ministry to wind up its pension scheme and move its subscribers to the New Pension Scheme run by the Pension Fund Regulatory Authority is taking a lot of steps to ensure that it remains in the good books of its subscribers.
So besides grievance redressal, the EPFO has ensured speed in the settlement of claims.
It is targeting settlement of all claims in 30 days, says Jalan. Though the online facility would enable settlement in three days, we want the offline process to be done in 30 days in every case he said.
And in the year 2012-13, 88% of the claims were settled within 30 days whereas in the current fiscal from April to July 2013, the settlement percentage of the claims settled within 30 days stood at 96.11%.
In the month of July 2013 alone, 10.83 lakh claims were settled and out of that 10.66 lakh were settled within 30 days. The percentage of claims settled within 30 days is 98.43% for the month of July 2013, EPFO said.
The number of contributing members to Employee Provident Fund Organisation has crossed 4.00 crore this month while EPFO distributed pension to more than 44 lakh pensioners during July, 2013.
