EPFO to recover overpaid amount from employers

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation has decided to recover overpayment of retirement dues to its subscribers from their employers.

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has decided to recover overpayment of retirement dues to its subscribers from their employers.

It is virtually impossible to trace subscribers and recover any overpaid amount from them. Either they have shifted from their office or residence or are unwilling to pay back the money. So it is recovered from the officer and staff in charge of the payment, an EPFO official said.

With its staff protesting against this practice,the retirement fund manager has now decided to ask the employers to repay the money. And in case they are unwilling to do so,the EPFO is planning to even lodge police complaints against them.

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It is therefore desired that immediate action be taken to recover the amount from the recipient/ establishment be initiated wherever possible by filing FIR or any other action as per rules, an internal missive of the EPFO has directed its field offices.

Over the years,overpayments to subscribers have risen steadily and has become a big headache for the EPFO. It is largely because of non-updation of accounts or manual errors but as every single rupee has to be accounted for,recovery of the money is a big issue, the official said,adding that about Rs 10 crore is stuck in over payments and irregular payments.

The retirement fund manager,with a corpus of over Rs 3.5 lakh crore,has also been regularly pulled up by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour as well as the CAG for over payments and irregular payments to subscribers.

Pointing to a serious system lapse,the CAG in a recent audit report had highlighted the rising trend of irregular payments and over payments by the EPFO. While overpayments had shot up from 0.78 crore in 2005-06 to 2.25 crore in 2009-10,irregular payments grew marginally from 5.15 crore to 5.35 crore in the same period.