New Delhi: The Central Board (EPF) under the chairmanship of Union Minster of State for Labour and Employment (Independent Charge) Shri Bandaru Dattatreya held its 216th special meeting in New Delhi today.
Following are the key decisions of the Board.
The Board took note of the extension of Employees’ Enrolment Campaign (EEC) by the Government for additional three months beginning 01st April 2017. The EEC aims to enroll left out employees and provides incentives to employers in the form of waiver of administrative charges, nominal damages @ Rupee 1/- annum and waiver of employees share if not deducted.
In an important decision, the Central Board (EPF) recommended to the central government to consider issuing a notification for extending Social Security Benefits to the volunteers of various schemes workers i.e. Anganwadi, ASHA, Mid-day Meal Workers under the ambit of EPFO.
The Board decided to allow all banks including private sector banks for collecting contributions from Employers and making payments to employees in addition to SBI, nationalized banks and payGov platform through direct net banking services. This introduction is expected to bring down the cost for employers for transactions and will facilitate more options for employers/employees to transact with EPFO. For collection of contributions through aggregator, competitive bids may be called for from all banks.
A new eligibility condition for grant of exemption under EPF and MP Act to establishments was approved. To be eligible to be considered for exemption under the Act, the establishments would henceforth require compliance with EPFO as an un-exempted establishment for a minimum period of 5 years, should employ at least 500 employees and their corpus should be at least Rs. 100 Crore at the time of seeking an exemption. Board decided that this rule will apply to prospective establishments and for existing establishments, the matter will be examined separately.
