The Central Board of Employees Provident Fund Trustees today met under the chairmanship of Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya and decided to recommend to the Government social security cover under the EPF Organisation to volunteers of  Anganwadi, ASHA, and Mid-Day meal schemes.

The Board took note of the extension of Employees’ Enrolment Campaign (EEC) by the Government for additional three months beginning 1 April 2017. The EEC aims to enroll left out employees and provides incentives to employers in the form of waiver of administrative charges, nominal damages of Re One per annum and waiver of employees share if not deducted.

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The Board decided to allow all banks including private sector banks for collecting contributions from employers and making payments to employees in addition to SBI, nationalised banks and payGov platform through direct net banking services. This introduction is expected to bring down the cost for employers for transactions and will facilitate more options for employers/employees to transact with EPFO. For collection of contributions through aggregator, competitive bids may be called for from all banks.

A new eligibility condition for grant of exemption under EPF and MP Act to establishments was approved. To be considered for exemption under the Act, the establishments would henceforth require compliance with EPFO as an un-exempted establishment for a minimum period of 5 years, should employ at least 500 employees and their corpus should be at least Rs 100 crore at the time of seeking an exemption. The Board decided that this rule will apply to prospective establishments and for existing establishments, the matter will be examined separately.