PF Body to Provide Universal Account Number to Contributing Members Initially

New Delhi: The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has decided to work in mission mode to provide portable universal account numbers to contributing members initially and seed it with Aadhaar and PAN to make it more secure.

"The Employees' Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has decided to allot a UAN to all members of the fund. To start with, UAN will be provided to the members who are presently contributing to the fund," an office order said.

According to available information, 3.1 crore members contributed towards social security schemes run by the retirement fund body in June this year. However, total members were 11.78 crore as on March 31, 2014.

The PF body has planned to provide UAN to its subscribers by October 15 this year. The allotment of UAN would link all employments of the EPF members thus facilitating portability.

"...field offices have very less time to get the work completed...It is, therefore, necessary for you to work in a mission mode. A lot of passion is required at your end to accomplish this task," the order added.

The UAN will be portable throughout the working career of members and can be used anywhere in India. Thus, the workers in organised sector would not need to apply for transfer of PF account claim on changing jobs.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech had announced about allotting UAN to EPFO subscribers. According to the office order, the Labour Ministry has committed that the seeding of KYCs to the UAN number would be completed by 15th October, 2014.

EPFO has constituted a special team to oversee the progress of UAN project. The team will also visit regional offices to deal with problems faced by field staff in implementation of the UAN programme.

EPFO field offices are also asked to apprise employers about their role in the entire project.

The head office told field staff to impress upon the employers that Aadhaar/NPR must be seeded wherever available as it would be useful.

In places where Aadhaar/NPR is not available, the local UIDAI office should be contacted so that it can send a team for registration of the employees for Aadhaar, it said.

As per the order, KYC (know-your-customer) selected for the purpose are Aadhaar/NPR, PAN and bank account number. Though, the portal provides for seeding of other KYCs such as election card, ration card, passport, driving license etc., which are not mandatory in a way but seeding of the same would definitely give more security to the UAN of a particular member, it added.