EPFO to undergo restructuring, fill thousands of posts

After infusion of technology to improve delivery, retirement fund body EPFO may face another challenge of filling thousands of existing as well as new vacancies as per the proposed organisational restructuring plan.
The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's apex decision making body, Central Board of Trustees (CBT), will meet on December 9 to consider organisational restructuring which includes promotions and creating new post across all cadres.
"At present, the EPFO has about 24,000 sanctioned staff to run it 123 offices across the country divided into 10 zones. There is shortfall of 6,000 as these vacancies are yet to be filled," a senior Labour Ministry official said.

"With the CBT considering restructuring plan next week, the number of sanctioned post will further go up. Thus the body would have to fill these thousands of posts to meet the expectations of its over five crore subscribers and 50 lakh pensioners," he said.
The committed appointed by the EPFO to review and suggest measures for restructuring of cadres in the body has recommended creating posts based on the number subscribers handled by various departments.
The official said: "The committee has asked to create new post and additional posts in view of increasing work load of the body."

The committee in its report has said: "Taking into account the workload and other parameters such as topography of the area, concentration of industry etc, the Zonal Offices may be bifurcated into 13 (thirteen) Zones for better delivery of service and also for proper monitoring and review of performance of the field offices."

Operations of the retirement fund body are divided into 10 zones to handle work load across the country.
The panel has also said that certain regional offices can further be divided into many regional or sub offices like in the case of Bandra office where work load is very high.
The restructuring of the EPFO is likely to result in early promotion as well as enhanced packages for EPFO staff.
Officials stagnating for almost 20 years will be benefited as per the committee's report.
The EPFO manages a huge corpus of Rs 8.5 lakh crore and is expected receive incremental deposits of Rs 1.2 lakh crore during this fiscal. It had provided 8.75 per cent rate of interest in the 2013-14 and 2014-15.

(REOPEN DEL54)
As per the earlier norms, subscribers were allowed to claim 90 per cent of their accumulations in their PF account at the age of 54 years and their claims were settled just one year before their retirement.
The earlier clause was relevant because there were establishments where retirement age was 55 years or 56 years. But this will create a problem in private as well as public sector where people opt for voluntary retirement.
The big change is that now under this facility, the subscriber would be able to withdraw his contribution and interest earned on it unlike 90 per cent of the total accumulations earlier.

In another change, EPFO has made it mandatory to wait till attaining the age of 57 for claiming PF withdrawal for transferring that to the Life Insurance Corporation of India for investment in Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana.
Earlier norms used to allow subscribers to claim 90 per cent of their accumulations for investing in the scheme after attaining the age of 55 years.
All these new provisions related to PF withdrawal would be applicable from May 1, 2016.