Employees' Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has made a big announcement for crores of employed and salaried employees across the country. This news, which came out on the holiday, is going to bring a smile on the face of every employee who deposits a fixed portion of his hard-earned money in the provident fund every month. It has often been seen that whenever an employee had to check his provident fund i.e. PF balance, he had to face the problem of slow server of the official portal, non-receipt of OTP or technical glitch. Especially during the beginning of the month or the financial year, there was so much traffic on the website that it became common for the server to be down. This time EPFO, taking a historic leap towards Digital India, has officially launched its most popular and much awaited service on the instant messaging platform WhatsApp. Now you do not need to open heavy portals on your computer or visit cyber cafes, just WhatsApp on your smartphone will become the key to your entire PF account.
Keeping the convenience of the employees paramount, EPFO has issued a dedicated helpline number which works on a completely automated and secure system. To avail this new facility, shareholders must first register with the official number. +91-7738299899 (or EPFO's central WhatsApp helpdesk number) has to be saved in the phonebook of your mobile phone as 'EPFO Helpdesk' or 'EPF WhatsApp'. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you have to send this message from the same mobile number which is officially registered and linked with your Universal Account Number i.e. UAN. After saving the number, open WhatsApp and go to the chat box and just write 'Hi' or 'EPFOHO' and send it. As soon as your message is delivered, the system will immediately send an interactive menu clearly showing the option to select your language and choose various services. This entire process is completed in the blink of an eye and the hassle of downloading any third-party app is completely eliminated.
This question is arising in the minds of many people whether only the balance will be visible on WhatsApp or other facilities will also be available. EPFO has made this system multifunctional keeping in mind the modern user experience. Through WhatsApp chatbot, you can now see the total credit balance of your account, in which the employee's share and the company's share are clearly recorded separately. Apart from this, details of the annual interest received on the amount deposited in the account and the date on which the last contribution made by the company was credited will also appear on the screen. Employees who have applied for partial or full PF withdrawal i.e. claim for any emergency, medical need, house construction or marriage, will also be able to track the real-time status of their claim here. What's more, if you need a summary of your digital e-passbook, the chatbot instantly sends you a secure and encrypted link or PDF slip in the chat, giving you access to your entire service record details seamlessly.
This facility is going to prove to be a boon for crores of workers working in industrial and IT hubs like Lucknow, Kanpur, Noida, Ghaziabad, the capital of Uttar Pradesh and in remote areas of the country. There are many employees in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities who were intimidated by complex online portals, technical formalities like captcha codes and password resets or did not have access to personal computers. Factory workers, outsourcing employees and workers in small institutions working locally also know how to use WhatsApp on their smartphones. EPFO has taken special care to support Hindi and English as well as many major regional languages in the WhatsApp service so that no employee is deprived of information about his rights and hard-earned money due to linguistic barrier. There is every possibility of a huge decline in the daily long queues at regional EPFO offices and huge crowd at the inquiry counters, because more than 80 percent of the questions are related to balance and claim tracking.
With the expansion of digital services, the threat of online security and cyber fraud also remains constant, hence EPFO has implemented strict security protocols for the subscribers. First of all, make sure that the number you are communicating with has EPFO's official green tick or Verified Business Profile badge. EPFO has clearly clarified that the department's system never asks for your complete Aadhaar number, bank account password, UPI PIN, credit or debit card confidential information or OTP on WhatsApp chat. If any person or unauthorized number asks you to share OTP in the name of EPFO, then understand that it could be a fraud. This service works under end-to-end encryption and fetches data only on concordance of registered mobile number and activated UAN, hence your data remains completely secure and it is impossible for any unauthorized person to access your account information.
Till now EPFO was providing the facility to its members to know the balance through Umang App, SMS and missed call, but all these had some practical limitations. For example, the missed call service (011-22901406) sometimes did not receive return messages or was delayed by hours due to network jams. Whereas in SMS service (sending EPFOHO UAN to 7738299899) if there was no talk-time or SMS balance in the mobile recharge plan, the message was not sent, whereas during heavy traffic on Umang app, the log-in session got expired again and again. WhatsApp has emerged as an intuitive and modern solution to all these problems because almost every smartphone user has an active internet data pack and the interface of WhatsApp is very fast, interactive and easy to understand. Getting instant response at the click of a button makes this system miles ahead of all the old systems, which saves precious time of the salaried class.