Retirement fund body EPFO has decided to become a registrar of the Unique Identification Authority of India to facilitate enrolment of its subscribers who don’t have Aadhaar numbers.
The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) wants to seed over 4.2 crore portable Universal PF Account Numbers issued by it, with the Aadhaar number of subscribers.
EPFO wants of leverage its over 120 field offices for the seeding of Aadhaar numbers with UAN to facilitate the body in improving delivery of services to subscribers on real time basis which includes online settlement of PF claims.
In order to deliberate upon the strategy to seed more Aadhaar numbers in UAN database, a meeting was held between EPFO and UIDAI in the presence of UIDAI’s Director General & Mission Director Vijay S Madan and EPFO’s Central Provident Fund Commissioner K.K. Jalan.
“During the meeting, it was decided that EPFO should sign up as registrar to enrol EPF members, who do not have an Aadhaar number to facilitate the enrolment process for such members,” an office circular said.
It was noted during the meeting that under UAN programme, the seeding of Aadhaar number in the UAN database is very low.
At present for 4.2 crore UANs issued by EPFO, only around 42 lakh Aadhaar numbers of members have been uploaded and about 21 lakh Aadhaar numbers of members have been digitally verified by the employers.
It was also decided that till the process for EPFO to become Registrar and engagement of Enrolment agencies is completed, the field offices of UIDAI would facilitate setting up of enrolment camps at all the offices of EPFO coming under their jurisdiction immediately.
The availability of an enrolment camp at each of its field office would facilitate the EPF members to enrol conveniently at these camps, as per the circular.
EPFO has planned to launch a facility of submitting online application for settlement of PF withdrawal claims next month.
The facility, however, would be available to all those members whose PF account is seeded with Aadhaar number as biometric details would help to facilitate the big financial transactions.