Following pension-related complaints, including delays in disbursals, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) launched the Prayaas Yojana in July 2020 to help the retiring employees complete the pension formalities with ease on the day of superannuation.

One of the initiatives under the scheme is to provide the pension payment order (PPO) to the EPS 1995 members on the day of retirement, which is necessary for pension disbursals.

In continuation towards this endeavour, and to provide a new update, on September 19, EPFO, in a post on X, announced that 1,025 PPOs were handed over in August 2024 and that it had conducted 8,510 webinars till August 31, 2024, to increase awareness about its Prayaas initiative.

What Is Prayaas Yojana?

Under this scheme, the employee’s accumulated fund is released on the day of superannuation. The corpus includes contributions from the employee and the employer throughout the working years until retirement.

Earlier, the employees had to apply to EPFO after retirement to get their pensions released. This process took time, although both offline and online modes were available. The process involved collecting proper documents from the employer and submitting them at the PF office. It was a time-consuming and tiresome task for the retirees. The Prayaas initiative has made this process faster and easier.

Benefits Of The Prayaas Scheme:

Under this scheme, an employee can submit the papers six months before retirement so the EPFO can process and ready the documents for distributing the PPO orders on their retirement day. The timely issuance of PPOs makes the process convenient. There is no need to run around the PF office as the employer does what is needed while the person is still working. Most importantly, it removes the uncertainty from retirees’ lives as they are no longer unsure about when they will receive the pension because PPO is given to them on the superannuation day.

Also Read: How Is Pension Income Taxed? 3 Things To Know To Reduce Liability

Employer’s Role

Under the scheme, the employer files the required pension claims to the regional PF office and pays the PF contribution for the retirement month in advance. They also need to submit the necessary documents, including Form-10D, to let the PF office complete the pension payment formalities by the date of retirement and be able to hand over the PPO to the employee.

Once the PPO is issued, the pension is disbursed to the employee’s bank account. The pensioner will have to submit a life certificate every year, online or offline, to the bank to continue receiving the pension.

EPFO has been conducting webinars for soon-to-be-retired employees to make them aware of the scheme. In June of this year, EPFO issued guidelines for the zonal and regional offices to issue PPOs monthly and increase awareness about the initiative.