The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will create a system to send transaction notifications to EPF members each time their contributions are deducted from their salary, Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said after a Friday review meeting in New Delhi.

Currently, EPF members can check these deductions on their salary slips and EPF passbooks. The minister stressed that real-time transaction alerts will boost efficiency and transparency in the system and foster trust while providing convenience to employees’ provident fund members to track retirement savings and address any discrepancies promptly.

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What The Minister Emphasised:

Besides directing the EPFO to send transaction notifications to EPF members, the minister highlighted the need to improve the grievance redressal mechanism during the meeting. He said addressing and resolving complaints in a time-bound manner is important. He also stressed building trust among employees and employers by providing a transparent system to resolve queries and grievances in a timely and efficient manner and enhance the EPFO’s overall efficiency.

The EPF members will now get notifications each time their employers deduct their EPF contributions from their salary. It is expected to reduce balance queries and build trust.

EPFO Challenges:

According to EPFO’s 2022-23 annual report, it maintains the accounts of 29.88 crore members. This large number of accounts and lack of digital infrastructure have been the primary reasons for the delay in resolving complaints. For instance, in the same financial year, EPFO rejected 2.49 million claims or around 34 per cent of the 7.38 million total claims. Most complaints were for delayed transactions, claims rejections due to technical issues, and incomplete or incorrect details.

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To overhaul EPFO’s digital infrastructure, the minister recently announced a new information technology (IT) system 2.0, which is expected to be ready and operational within three months. This long-awaited requirement is expected to help resolve the growing number of unresolved grievance cases and improve the processing time for claims and queries. He stressed that claims rejections due to mismatches in details and technical issues also need to be minimised.