EPFO reaches out to pensioners on doorstep to issue DLCs

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, January 19

In a first, the Ludhiana regional office of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has launched a special campaign for issuance of digital life certificates (DLCs) to pensioners on their doorsteps.

The DLC or ‘Jeevan Praman Patra’, as it is popularly known, is required to be furnished by the pensioners to their respective pension disbursing authorities (PDAs) such as the bank or the post office, once every year, in case they are unable to present themselves personally before the PDAs.

Over 27,000 subscribers enrolled with the EPFO regional office here will be benefitted under the drive, Regional Provident Fund Commissioner (RPFC) -I Dheeraj Gupta told The Tribune, here, on Wednesday. He said besides holding special camps on the premises of the establishments, which had requested for the same, to facilitate their employees on their doorsteps, officials of the EPFO were also visiting the aged, frail and ailing pensioners, who were unable to visit the EPFO office due to their old age or surge in Covid cases.

Sharing a few such cases wherein the aged and frail subscribers were issued DLCs at their homes, Gupta said one such pensioner, Rajinder Kaur Sekhon, had contacted the EPFO office and intimated that her DLC was due for pension. She expressed her inability to visit the office due to her ill-health and the pandemic situation. “On her request, an official went to her residence and uploaded her life certificate through a biometric machine,” he said.

In another such case, a pensioner from Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, Kripeshwari Shukla (87), had undergone a surgery a few days ago and was unable to walk. She was staying in Ludhiana with her daughter. Her daughter contacted the EPFO office and requested to upload her DLC documents from home as her pension was stopped due to the non-submission of the documents. She was getting pension from UP but on her request, the EPFO official visited her place, though the member was not an EPF pensioner. The EPFO official uploaded her DLC on her doorstep.

Another pensioner Bharat Jha, who was getting pension from Muzaffarpur in Bihar, and his pension was stopped due to the non-submission of the DLC, visited the EPFI local office for help without knowing the fact that the DLC can be processed at any EPFO office across the country. His DLC was also captured and uploaded at the Ludhiana office, following which his pension was restored from Muzaffarpur.

In another case, the EPFO office went an extra mile to help a subscriber, Sandeep Riat, owner of Akal Spring, got her provident fund within a couple of days in her bank account.

“To avoid frauds and in view of advisories issued from higher offices, we have started the practice of calling members for cross verification on the receipt of their applications for partial withdrawal when the amounts are high. Similar cross verification was done in Riat’s case and the amount was credited to her bank account within three days,” the RPFC-I said.

The EPFO office also held a camp at Oswal Woollen Mills Limited here and issued DLCs to employees at their workplace.

Figures at a glance

• Total pensioners: 27,533 n Pension disbursed in Dec: 22,507
• DLCs updated till date: 17,552 n Average DLCs updated daily: 400
• Pension not disbursed: 5,026 (3,937 due to non-submission of the DLCs for over 3 years, 1,089 PPOs became invalid)

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