"RE-INVENTING EPF, INDIA" PROJECT READY FOR IMPLEMENTATION

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"The Re-inventing EPF, India" Project is ready for implementation. It is awaiting formal approval by the Board of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund. The Board of Trustees is meeting here tomorrow to consider formal acceptance and approval of the Business Process Re-engineering Report (BPR), and its financial implications. The Board of Trustees in its 157^th Meeting in July this year accepted the BPR in principle and wanted a cost benefit analysis. The Finance & Investment Committee constituted thereafter said that the project was financially viable and unanimously recommended for implementation of BPR to make EPFO a world class organisation delivering best possible services. In the event of opting for the implementation of the BPR the following benefits are likely :-

• Information driven coverage of all the coverable Establishments;
• Real time default detection and follow up action thereon.
• Benefit delivery within 2 to 3 days in respect of all the claims, which are complete.
• Scientific accounting of the money based on the established accounting standards.
• Updation of Members account on real time basis and real time access convenience to the members to their accounts.
• Efficient fund flow management duly taking advantage of technology available and saving of loss to bank on the ‘float’.
• Long-term savings on telephone/fax. This would reduce the impact on the miscellaneous expenditure.
• The settlement of claims, which includes 80% resignation cases, would be reduced substantially with the introduction of S.S.N. This would reduce the infructuous withdrawal of about 3000 crores.
• Highly effective grievance settlement machinery. With the reduction of number of claims, the number of grievances will come down.
• Savings on the cost of returning claims, to the tune of Rs.25 crores.

(Assumptions: a) Two thirds of 9.62 lakh claims are returned due to inadequate information.

b) The cumulative cost to the Organisation in returning a claim is Rs.400/- per case.)

• Efficiency increase by 900% with target time of 3 days for claim settlement.

(Assumption : All the cases are now being settled in 30 days).

• Increase of 400% in efficiency grading in terms of customer satisfaction level.
• Since the subscribers can have access to his account anytime, this would lead to transparency and provide public confidence in the institutions of the government.
• Labour market movement, gender, occupation/industry wise labour data, job and wage profiles etc. will get created as a by product for strategic management and for policy evaluation, formulation and for research.
• Prevent exponential growth in manpower and attendant costs.