A very relieving news has come out for the account holders of Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO). The Labor Ministry has taken a big decision related to PF. Under the new scheme of the ministry, the money from closed accounts will be deposited directly into your bank account without any paperwork.
In which accounts will the money reach?
In this new scheme, those inoperative or inactive accounts are included in which the amount of one thousand rupees or less is deposited. According to the information given by the department, account holders will no longer need to submit any application on their own. The department will immediately transfer money to the bank accounts of those whose accounts are linked to Aadhaar card. The amount will be gradually transferred to the remaining accounts also.
What is the government’s plan?
According to the rules, if there is no activity in an EPFO account for three consecutive years, then it is considered inoperative i.e. inactive account. At present this process of refund has been started as a pilot project. In the initial phase, out of total 31 lakh inactive accounts, about six lakh accounts have been selected for this. If this initial experiment is successful, the same automated process will be adopted for the remaining approximately 25 lakh inactive accounts.
Funds worth thousands of crores of rupees are stuck
If we look at the data, there are a total of 31.86 lakh inactive EPFO accounts, in which a huge amount of about Rs 10,903 crore is deposited. At the same time, the number of accounts in which small amount of up to Rs 1000 is deposited is about 6 lakh and the total amount deposited in them is Rs 30.52 crore. These are such accounts in which no financial activity has been recorded for a long period ranging from last three years to twenty years and their money is lying idle.
Lakhs of people associated with EPFO are going to directly benefit from this big decision of the Labor Ministry. Till now people used to forget their old accounts after changing jobs or wanted to avoid complicated paperwork in offices for small amounts. With this new system, this amount will easily reach the account holders without any hassle. The way for resolution of accounts in which no transactions had taken place for years has now become clear.