Wait till March for online settlement of PF claims

Online settlement of provident fund (PF) claims and getting other related information through the net may not happen until March next year as the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has sought time till then to computerise the operations of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).

The trustees of EPFO in a meeting on December 5 pulled up the NIC authorities, who claim to have computerised five of the 119 EPFO offices, but to date not a single claim has been settled online.

The first phase of computerisation of the EPFO offices were to be completed within a year of the EPFO's apex body --Central Board of Trustees' (CBT) -- approval of the project in April last year.

However, NIC has now sought time till March 2010 after having missed the April deadline.

The Informatics Centre has now assured the EPFO that by March next year phase I would be completed, which would enable settlement of PF claims in 7-10 days and also allow subscribers to view information on their PF accounts online.

EPFO trustees, including Secretary Hind Mazoor Sabha A D Nagpal and Secretary All India Trade Union Congress D L Sachdev, also expressed concern over the increase in project cost during the first phase from Rs 15 crore to Rs 96 crore.

However, later the trustees allocated Rs 96 crore for the project, sources close to development said.

The trustees, after giving approval last year, wanted work on Phase-I of the project to start immediately for which NIC had to come up with a detailed plan and estimated cost within four months.

Subsequent to the approval, a Memorandum of Understanding was also signed between EPFO and NIC on June 4, last year for execution of the project following which a joint team from the EPFO and NIC started work on the design of the project.

The software development work for the first phase started in September last year.

The focus of the first phase was to develop and implement an application software to provide best possible services to depositors and to help in creation of a strong local database.

The second phase would concentrate on consolidating services and database at the central level for a truly anytime-anywhere service. At Present, it takes 30-45 days for settling a claim.