Over 650,000 users dip into EPF savings

More than 650,000 individuals have dug into their worker provident fund (EPF) financial savings to offset the earnings loss attributable to the lockdown imposed to test the unfold of the coronavirus.

As many as 30,000-35,000 persons are withdrawing their provident fund financial savings on a median working day in April, a sign of the hardship the working class is dealing with.

Around ₹2,700 crore has already been withdrawn underneath the newly-facilitated pandemic guidelines, in keeping with knowledge from retirement fund supervisor Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). “This includes both money withdrawn from the retirement fund corpus directly under EPFO and the corpus managed by company PF trusts. These are not just workers from small firms, but also those from blue-chip companies,” mentioned a authorities official, who refused to be named.

According to EPFO knowledge, exempted PF trusts or these managed by corporations underneath overarching guidelines of the retirement fund supervisor, have facilitated the withdrawal of just about ₹500 crore for his or her workers.

Neyveli Lignite Corp. in Cuddalore has seen its workers withdraw ₹84.four crore of provident fund cash, adopted by Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in Vizag (₹40.9 crore), and NTPC Ltd (₹28 crore). “The exempted provident fund trusts have risen to the occasion amid the pandemic…some of the exempted establishments have done exemplary work,” EPFO mentioned in an e mail.

“The income loss is real. When businesses have suffered a massive setback, people are also bound to have lost income. However, we did not think that so many people will withdraw money under the new rules. The trend we are observing is not confined to one state or a few industrial locations. It is across states and sectors,” mentioned the official talked about above. In the subsequent 10 days, at the very least 1,000,000 subscribers might withdraw cash from PF accounts, mentioned the official.

“Construction, road transport, logistics, IT, manufacturing…all have lost businesses. The income loss is huge and people must have dipped into their PF money,” labour economist mentioned KR Shyamsundar.