No leave till October 15, complete work on UAN: EPFO to staff

No EPFO staff can take leave till October 15, the deadline to make portable universal account PF numbers (UAN) operational, the retirement fund body said.

Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is in the process of seeding Know-Your-Customer (KYC) details like PAN, Aadhaar and bank account number of 4.17 crore contributing members for making their UANs operational by October 15.

An EPFO office order said: "This is a herculean task and therefore, EPFO needs to be in mission mode to complete this task....Hence it is ordered that no leave be granted to officers and staff in general till October 15."

However as per the order, the leave can be granted in exceptional circumstances by specified authorities.

The UAN will be portable throughout the working career of members and can be used anywhere in India. Thus, the workers in organised sector would not need to apply for transfer of PF account claim on changing jobs.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech had announced about allotting UAN to EPFO subscribers.

The Labour Ministry has committed that the seeding of KYCs to the UAN number would be completed by October 15.

EPFO has also constituted a special team to oversee the progress of UAN project. The team will also visit regional offices to deal with problems faced by field staff in implementation of the UAN programme.

Last week, the body had initiated the process of providing portable PF account number to members by issuing 4.17 crore UANs for members who contributed in any one of the last six months for seeding them with workers' KYCs.

EPFO has set a deadline to complete the seeding of UAN with KYCs by September 15 this year.