Shimla, 12th July, 2022. Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) is one of the largest “Social Security Organization” in the world, providing Social Security cover to nearly 25 Crore members, Pensioners stakeholders since 1952. With an Aim Vision to extend universal coverage and ensuring “Nirbadh” (Seamless and uninterrupted) service delivery to our stakeholders, EPFO has taken several initiatives from time to time to ensure ease of living for members and pensioners, and also ease of doing business for employers by leveraging Government of India’s state-of-the-art technology platforms for reaching out to millions.
EPFO in its commitment to expand Social Security benefits to its members, especially for the pensioners has come a long way by making a paradigm shift from Employees’ Family Pension (EFP) Scheme of 1971 to Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS) 1995 thereby not only giving pension to its members on attaining the age of 58 years, but also to the Widow Pension, Children Pension, Orphan Pension, Disability Pension Nominee Pension to the beneficiary of the member(s) on member’s death or disability.
In July, 2020 an initiative “Prayaas” was started by EPFO wherein PPO was to be handed over to the pensioner on the date of retirement. Webinars for promoting the ‘Prayaas’ initiative were started to be conducted every month to sensitize the retiring members and employers so that they can submit the Pension Claims complete in all aspect and EPFO can issue PPO on the day of superannuation to the EPS 1995 members.As a result EPFO handed over more than 6000 PPOs on the day of retirement in 2020 in spite of constraint of Corona.
In this direction, to further improve the quality of services rendered to our EPFO Pensioners to be at par with Global Standards and those offered to Government Employees who receive pension on their date of superannuation, the Punjab Himachal Zone and Gujarat Zone of EPFO under the guidance of Central PF Commissioner and initiative of Additional Central PF Commissioner of the Zones has now decided to bring a radical shift in approach from “PRAYAAS” to “VISHWAS” – from a few and selected cases to universal approach in PPO distribution on date of member’s superannuation.
As our country is celebrating “Aazadi ka Amrit Mahotsav”to celebrate and commemorate 75
years of independence and the glorious history of it people, culture and achievements, therefore both the Zones on the this glorious occasion under this new initiative named “Prayaas to Vishwas- an initiative towards disbursement of pension to superannuating members on the date of retirement” had organized an event in all the 14 Regional offices located in Punjab, Himachal and Gujarat on 12 th August, 2022. Under this initiative, all eligible retiring members upto 12 th August, 2022 got their PPO on their day of superannuation.
During the event organized by Officer-In-Charge, Regional Office, Shimla and his team at SVM School, Vikas Nagar, Shimla PPOs were distributed to 45 number of pensioners by Lekh Raj Thakur, Principal, Chief Guest for the function. On this occasion, Gulshan Ram, Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner, appealed to all the establishments to complete all the relevant documents from all the retiring employees and fill-up Form-10D online on the member portal alongwith other necessary documents at the beginning of the month and also submit filled form 10D offline in the office so that the office can complete the formalities on time and hand over the Pension Payment Order (PPO) to the employees on the day of their retirement. Further helpdesks were also set up at the venue to facilitate the Pensioners. The various initiatives
