Provident Fund account, a government-managed retirement savings scheme, will be transferred automatically if people move from one organisation to the other, without any effort from next month, said chief provident fund commissioner V P Joy.
Earlier, to transfer the PF account, employees had to go through the long application process which was time-consuming. Hence, many people would close their PF accounts and would restart their account later on. To trim, hassles such as this, the fund commissioner VP Joy is seeking to come up with new initiatives in the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) and make it more worker-friendly, Economic Times reported.
"Whenever there is change of job, a lot of accounts are closed; then they (the employees) restart their account later on," said VP Joy.
"Now we have made Aadhaar compulsory for enrolment. We don't want accounts to be closed. The PF account is the permanent account. The worker can retain the same account for social security."
Workers must, however, have their Aadhaar ID to get their account transferred within three days. Prior to that, government had made it compulsory for the people to link their Aadhaar account to their Permanent Account Number (PAN) card, bank account and mobile phone number. Also, government along with the watchdog -Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) are planning to link Aadhaar to financial markets transactions in a bid to trim stock market misconducts.
Nonetheless, Joy also said PF money should be taken out only for major reasons such as housing, children's education or serious medical condition.
"We are now starting a campaign...to educate people that money must be withdrawn only for essential purposes," added Joy.
