Labour Ministry to nab errant employers

Lokubandara Munasinghe

COLOMBO: The Labour Ministry has launched a special programme to nab employers who have ceased to pay their EPF contribution, in a bid to revive their accounts and help over 92,000 affected employees islandwide.

Labour Minister Athauda Seneviratene said he was planning legal action for those who fail to fall in line with the ministry directive.

At a media briefing held today at the Labour Secretariat, Narahenpita the Minister said, the Department of Labour (DOL) and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) launched a joint project to re-register all the Employment Provident Fund (EPF) members under their National Identity Cards (NICs).

This step has been taken with the aim of eliminating the mismatches in the database of the CBSL and the DOL and employers.

The Minister added that this process will benefit the present contribution of 2.1 million members from 57,000 employers and he pointed out that this is a land mark decision considering the 49 year history of Sri Lanka’s EPF.

Under the re-registration process, Members of the EPF would be re-registered by their names as appearing in the NICs and the same NIC number will be assigned as their member account numbers.

After the re-registration, the employees’ NIC numbers will be their member account numbers regardless of any change of employment. Members’ prior employment accounts will be amalgamated to the newly created member account numbers. Also the thumb print image of members would be obtained electronically and linked to the member’s accounts.

Therefore under this programme several objectives will be achieved such as speedy processing of member refunds, minimising fraudulent claims of member benefits, ensuring payment benefits to the legitimate parties and assisting employers to completely eliminate the risk of remitting member contributions to the incorrect member accounts.

Meanwhile, arrangements have been made under the project to carry out an islandwide survey to collect information on employees and employers initially and thereafter the thumbprint of the members would be taken.

Thereafter, employers are requested to register new employees with the EPF, strictly according to the name as appearing in the employee’s NIC number and take action to send their monthly member contributions in this manner.

The Labour Department Officers or authorised officers will visit the relevant workplaces and collect the information on NICs and other relevant data.

The EPF Act No. 15 of 1958 was established to provide shelter to the retired employees in the Government and the private sector for both pensioners and non-pensioners. At present EPF has a cumulative collection of almost Rs. 4 billion.