EPFO Officers to Labour Min: Strengthen CITES, Improve Service

New Delhi, Aug 4 (PTI) The EPF Officers' Association has sought the intervention of the Labour & Employment Minister for strengthening the Centralised IT Enabled System (CITES) by roping in more technocrats and professionals to improve service delivery.

In a letter shot off to the minister, who is also Chairman of the retirement fund EPFO's apex decision-making body, the Central Board of Trustees (CBT), the officers' body stated that the new automated system, which was launched to modernise the operations and cut down the claim settlement to 2-3 days in majority of cases, has seen pendency of claims of more than 20 days.

The association also pointed out that the EPFO is trying to run a modern, technology-driven organisation with insufficient internal IT infrastructure and technical experts.

"If we consider EPFO subscribers, pensioners, and their immediate family members, EPFO directly touches the lives of about 25 to 35 crore Indians, i.e. about one-fifth of the population of our country. Therefore, how EPFO functions & delivers its services is of national importance," the association noted.

Subscribers now look to the EPFO for world-class services, immediate claim settlement, priority grievance redressal, and shorter turnaround times, in line with standards set by other service delivery organisations, the body noted in the letter.

Meeting these expectations requires addressing deep-rooted organisational issues through timely policy-level intervention, it pointed out.

The body pointed out that the first policy-level failure is that EPFO is trying to run a modern, technology-driven organisation with insufficient internal IT infrastructure.

There has been no recruitment in the critical Information Services Division (ISD) of EPFO for the past several years, it pointed out. The last direct recruitment to ISD was done in the year 2004, i.e. 22 years ago. Many of the Joint Directors & Deputy Directors in ISD have either retired or resigned, and there has been no replacement, it stated.

It further pointed out that the EPFO has been unable to even recruit a full-time CTO (chief technology officer) for the past three years. The ISD is today functioning with minimal resources, and almost all of its development functions have been outsourced to CDAC, it pointed out.

The body is of the view that an external agency for software development is welcome; however, if there are insufficient internal technical experts to guide, assist & assess, the quality of output cannot be ensured.

The CITES project was given to CDAC in January 2023, with a 10-month timeline. The project has been inordinately delayed in the development stage, and even now it has been implemented in July 2026 in a piecemeal manner, the body noted.


The current flawed functioning of the project needs no comments, the statement added, stating that as the appointment of officers in the EPFO is the responsibility of the Chairman, CBT, therefore, this failure to plug the widening gap of technical officers in EPFO needs immediate response at the highest level to redress this acute gap.

The body noted that the last organisational-level assessment of workload was done by EPFO in 2016-17, and our field offices & in-position manpower are still continuing on the basis of that assessment.

The EPFO has grown by leaps & bounds over the past decade. In fact, the current manpower sanctions are equal to the sanctioned posts as on March 2008, it noted.

Metro offices such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Gurugram are under severe strain, handling technology-savvy subscribers with outdated staffing norms. This mismatch has led to rising grievances and operational stress, it opined.

Parliament in its wisdom empowered the Central Board of Trustees through the EPF & MP Act 1952 and the Code on Social Security 2020 to appoint as many officers and staff as are required for efficient administration of Schemes or any other responsibility assigned to it.

The body stated that for some reasons not clear to us, over the years, the Board has been very hesitant to exercise this statutory authority available to it. The EPF Officers' Association has been repeatedly requesting to specify norms and continuously upgrade technology to handle the increasing workload.

Sanctions are not forthcoming and technology remains at a very rudimentary level requiring manual certification of various processes, it noted. This defeats the very purpose of technology augmentation and automation support if almost every transaction requires manual oversight, it held.

The body also pointed towards the appointment of generalist officers without prior experience of the functioning of the EPFO. It also pointed towards the failure in the use of technology while implementing CITES.

It said, "Coming to the failure of technology to come to our rescue, let's discuss CITES & the mismanagement of handling its launch issues."

It was claimed that with the implementation of CITES, the majority of the claims would be processed in auto mode within 2-3 days; the body noted and said, "Unfortunately, the experience till now has been quite the opposite. Lakhs of auto claims were kept pending in the system for more than 20 days, with no explanation to either the field offices or to the members.

Field functionaries were left to their own devices for answering a multitude of grievances on official grievance channels, social media & in person, it stated.

This is clearly evident from a significant increase in grievances on the social media handle of the CBT Chairman, it noted.