New Delhi, Jul 10, 2022, IANS

New Delhi, Jul 10: A proposal is on EPFO drawing board to set up a central pension disbursal system for crediting the benefit into over 73 lakh pensioners' bank accounts in one go across India.

The retirement fund body will take up the proposal in its meeting on July 29 and 30, an EPFO official said.

Presently, over 138 regional offices of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) disburse pensions to beneficiaries in their region separately. As a result, pensioners of different regional offices get pensions at different times or on different days.

In the 229th meeting of the CBT held on November 20, 2021, the trustees had approved the proposal for development of centralised IT-enabled systems by C-DAC.

The labour ministry had stated in a statement after the meeting that post this, the field functionalities will move on a central database in a phased manner enabling smoother operations and enhanced service delivery.

The centralised system will facilitate de-duplication & merger of all PF accounts of any member. It will also remove the requirement of transfer of account on change of job, it had said.

The source said that the CBT will also consider and approve a proposal to allow withdrawal of deposits from pension accounts by subscribers who have contributed for less than six months.

Presently, only those subscribers are eligible for withdrawal from their pension accounts who have contributed for six months to 10 years.