NEW DELHI, March 15, 2016
In an attempt to make provident fund accounts portable in view of the growing mobility of labour, the government has directed factory inspectors to link the Aadhaar or PAN number of workers with the Universal Account Numbers (UAN) assigned to their PF account.
Central Provident Fund Commissioner V.P. Joy has written to all the regional commissioners in this regard.
“We have told all the compliance inspectors that whenever they go for inspection of an establishment, they should ask for Aadhaar or PAN card details of workers in advance. They may take the services of PF officials in seeding the Aadhaar or PAN card details of workers along with doing their round of inspection”, another senior EPFO official said.
The UAN facility allows workers to transfer their provident fund deposits easily while switching jobs anywhere in India. However, in order to do so, linking UAN with bank accounts and either Aadhaar or PAN details is mandatory.
So far, only 17 per cent of the total 6.36 crore UAN accounts have become portable.