EPF becomes crucial for MLC voter enrolment

Nellore: Non-implementation of Employees Provident Fund (EPF) scheme by several educational institutions has become a major problem for enrolment of voters before teacher MLC elections in the district.

Officials should compare the data of teaching and non-teaching staff members with the records of EPF and other mandatory registrations. Only those who have membership of 3 years in EPF are considered eligible to enrol as teacher voters for the MLC polls.

But with only a few schools implementing PF for their employees, some candidates are disappointed as they would not be able to enrol large number of voters.

There were 2,18,356 graduates and 20,121 teachers enrolled as voters in March 2017. But around 1.90 lakh graduates and 8,000 teachers submitted applications for enrolment as voters in the East Rayalaseema constituency this time up to November last year.

Though some private educational institutions have thousands of employees in their schools, colleges, engineering and medical colleges, they show not more than 10 per cent staff in their PF records. As they have to contribute to the scheme, the employers show only a small number of staff in records.

Due to this, many families who lost their family members to Covid could not get any pension or compensation. As per the Employees' Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI), those who died in Covid-19 were eligible to get Rs 7 lakh.

Teachers' unions have been demanding implementation of EPF scheme to all employees working in the institution.

As per the EPFO Act, EPF is mandatory for those working in private and public sector undertakings. The management has to deposit 10 per cent of the employee's salary in the employee's PF account.

However, the Employees' Pension Scheme was introduced on November 16, 1995, and accordingly, a part of the PF deposited by the management in the employee's account shall be converted to pension contribution.

"If these private employees have EPF, they will get pension after 58 years. In case of death in the service or after retirement, the funeral expenses and pension for the wife and children (below 25 years) will be paid. The Supreme Court has given a verdict on this pension on the higher pension option also. They will also be eligible for enrolment as voters in MLC polls," said GV Nagaraja Rao, High Court advocate from Nellore.