Getting your Provident Fund without paying a Bribe...

Okay..so you changed your job recently and want to transfer or withdraw your provident fund?Here is the step by step process:

1.Please complete the respective form for either transfer or withdrawl.The forms are available with your company.In case they do not have the forms,please download from the link :

http://www.epfindia.com/downloads_forms.htm

2.Complete the form and submit it to your last employer who has to certify the form and submit the same to your respective regional provident fund office and get the acknowledgement.Now this acknowledgement is really important.So please follow up with your last employer and get a copy of the same.

3.In case you are transferring your fund to new employer,please complete the respective form for transfer at new employer also on your joining day and get them sent to the provident fund office where your last employer was maintaining your account. (Very important if you change your city or state of employment ).

4.Now,after completing all this,you have now the acknowledgement in your hand which should give you the basis to follow up in case your provident fund does not get transferred/paid to you within a month after submitting the acknowledgement.Please note and remember your provident fund account number which is typically like for example MH/ROBANDRA/12345/123/1111.

This is the unique number which you should quote in all your correspondence to provident fund office.

5.Now after submission of the forms for withdrawl or transfer,keep an eye on the status of your claim on Provident Fund department's website link :

http://www.epfindia.com/ClaimStatus_New.html

6.In case you notice your claim is not moving ahead,lodge a grievance on provident fund website link :

http://epfigms.gov.in/

and note your grievance registration number.You will get the confirmation email and the details of the officer to whom the grievance has been referred.

Follow up on the same link periodically to check your grievance status and if not settled within a month,lodge a reminder for the same grievance on the same link.

7.Now parallel to the above point 6 where you are lodging reminder to PF office ,also lodge a grievance to Government Of India public grievance portal :

http://pgportal.gov.in/Grievance.aspx

Select "Central Government " and "Ministry Of Labour " from dropdown.

Make a note of the confirmation number and also capture the screenshot for reference as you may or may not get a confirmation email from this portal.

8.Parallely also lodge the grievance to President Of India Secretariat at link

http://helpline.rb.nic.in/

and note the number of registration.

The points from 5 to 8 above will ensure that you create enough pressure on provident fund office,so that they will settle your claim immediately.It works.

9.However ,assuming nothing works from the above,then please use the final weapon of Right To Information Act 2005 (RTI ).For using RTI,take help from the following link

http://rti.gov.in/ or email me at Chinmay@gavankars.com