291 firms default PF dues of Rs 1,838 crore

NEW DELHI: As many as 291 establishments have not paid the provident fund contributions totalling about 1,838 crore to the retirement fund manager EPFO across the country, Parliament has been informed.

"84 arrests were made and 2,842 convictions were ordered by various courts during the last three years..( despite) no provision of confiscating the property of defaulters under the Employees' Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Act 1952," Minister of Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge told Lok Sabha in a written reply.

Delhi topped the chart with maximum default of Rs 604.87 crore followed by West Bengal at Rs 207.55 crore and Maharashtra at Rs 201.38 crore, Kharge said.

The maximum number of such default cases were reported in Maharashtra at 56 followed by 54 in West Bengal and 48 in Uttar Pradesh.

Employees' Provident Fund Organisation manages a corpus of over Rs 3.5 lakh crore with subscriber base of over 4.7 crore in the country.