There is very good news for crores of Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) members of the country. An important meeting of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) of EPFO is going to be held on October 10-11 next month. Many big decisions are expected to be taken in this meeting, which will directly benefit the members. The biggest decision may be to set a deadline for implementing the EPFO 3.0 system, which will provide facilities like core banking to the members.
What is EPFO 3.0, and what will be the benefit of this
EPFO 3.0 is a new software that is being created to provide modern banking facilities to EPFO members. With the help of this system, members will now be able to withdraw a fixed amount from their account from ATM as per their need, for which they will not need any pre-approval. This is a big step that will make financial transactions much easier for about eight crore EPFO members. However, this software was to be implemented by June, but it was delayed due to some technical problems. Its new deadline will be decided in this meeting.
Pension can also be discussed
The minimum monthly pension of EPFO is currently ₹ 1,000, which the employee unions have been demanding to increase for a long time. Although this issue is not on the agenda yet, it is expected that the issue of pensions can also be included in the process of preparing the agenda. If this happens, the government can consider increasing this amount to ₹ 1,500 or ₹ 2,500, which will provide relief to lakhs of pensioners.
Review of Employment Incentive Scheme
The progress of the Employment Linked Incentive (ELI) scheme will also be reviewed in the meeting. The scheme came into effect from August 1 and aims to create more than 3.5 crore new formal jobs across the country. Under this scheme, first-time employees are being given incentives of up to ₹15,000, and employers are being given incentives of ₹3,000 per month for new employees with a salary of up to ₹1 lakh. The meeting will look at how much progress the scheme has made in the last few months and what steps need to be taken to make it more successful.