The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has asked its officials to increase the number of contributing subscribers after dip in numbers in some regional offices, including Darjeeling, where the number of subscribers fell by 93.70 percent in September 2017 as compared to 2016-17. The hilly town of West Bengal, which had 29,984 average number of contributing members in the last fiscal, has dropped to 1,890 in September 2017.
According to the EPFO data, about 31 offices reported fall in the number of subscribers by over 10 percent in September as compared to that of July in 2016. The body has asked its offices to “to concentrate efforts on increasing of contributing members…ensure that in coming months no such drop in membership is reflected,” PTI said. It showed that subscribers number has decreased from 4.62 crore in July to 4.38 crore in September in 2017.
The regional offices in Behrampur have reported the most number of exits by 35.8 percent to 99,468 contributing members in September from 1,54,985 in July in 2017. Same way, Bhagalpur has also reported a dip of 31.6 percent followed by Akola (25.7 percent), Warangal (23.5 percent), Keonjhar (20.8 percent) and Gulbarga (20.3 percent), the agency added.
In order to increase subscribers base, the EPFO had introduced a scheme for employers earlier this year which continued for six months till June 30. The programme also helped the retiring the fund body to enrol more than one crore new subscribers under its Employees’ Enrolment Campaign 2017 started on January 1 this year.
Employers got the chance to file the declaration of unregistered employees under the EPFO Act, with an annual fine of Re 1 per annum. The programme, which was earlier slated to run until March 31, 2017 was further extended till June 30, 2017.