We want to help workers buy homes: VP Joy, chief PF commissioner

EPFO, part of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, helps administer a mandatory and contributory PF, pension and an insurance scheme for all workers in the organised sector. It has 41.5 million workers and 4.5 lakh employers registered with it. Starting with Universal Account Number which allowed PF number portability in 2014, the government has been pushing to overhaul the organisation.

Kerala cadre IAS officer VP Joy, who is currently the chief PF commissioner, shared a slew of initiatives that the EPFO is undertaking to make it more worker and employer-friendly. Edited excerpts from an interview:

On the push to boost membership:
In January, we launched an enrolment campaign where we offered amnesty with penalty at a much lower rate to SME employers who had not fully enrolled their workers to bring them under the PF fold. The cut-off date was 2009. We have go good responses with 82 lakh additional subscribers coming on board.

On automation and digitisation
With 123 branch offices, our offices earlier operated like islands without being connected to each other. In case a worker got transferred from one zone to another, his file, money and account had to be physically moved too. It was also inefficient administratively. That has changed. Since March last year, we have spent just under Rs 100 crore to digitally connect 114 of our branch offices. This allows us at the centre to get updated data in real time.

On initiatives that will help workers
Our whole approach has changed. We get 1.16 crore claims every year and the majority, around 91.12 lakh, are premature closures. So we decided if people want to take advances, let's give it to them easily by smoothening the process. Our attempt now is to make PF attractive enough for them to stay invested.

On future plans for a PF subscriber
We are exploring other benefits that we can make available to our members. All our members already get life insurance (Rs 2.5-6 lakh). Now we are looking at helping with a housing scheme. The government has set a target of housing for all by 2022. Who will give home loans to a worker with Rs 13,000 salary? We started work on this in April. What we are exploring is if workers form a cooperative and our people certify the money they have in their account. HUDCO can give them loans at a subsidised rate. And 90% of the accumulated PF money can be the worker's first instalment towards a home purchase. We are currently talking to employers and workers to see how we can make this possible.

Meet VP Joy, the man trying to give EPFO a more worker and employer-friendly face

On dealing with exempted trusts
There are 1,551 exempted trusts (where employers' trusts themselves manage employees PF corpus) with 92.5 lakh subscribers with a corpus of Rs 3.04 lakh crore. We are strictly monitoring their investments and performance. Our thinking is whatever we at EPFO do, these exempted trusts should be able to do better.