New Delhi: With EPFO announcing new rules for depositing in provident funds, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi launched an attack on the organization as a sinister assault on hardworking Indians.
In a blistering social media post, he declared that the government was “subsidising itself with middle-class money” and transforming the provident fund, supposed to be a worker’s nest egg for retirement into a “bureaucratic straightjacket” that harasses people over their own savings.
Owaisi was angry over its revised guidelines for unemployed to make withdrawals. Previously, members could withdraw the full sum two months after loss of a job. And now, only 75% of it is available, the other 25% squirreled away for a return to a yearlong period of joblessness. “These are hardworking taxpayers not freeloaders,” Owaisi seethed on his tweet and asked his followers to read the replies to an EPFO post on changes. “Every day, people are tagging EPFO in despair and pleading for their hard-earned cash.”
He painted a grim picture: “25% may look like nothing to some, but for an unemployed person it is school fees or rent. What’s the good for someone drowning in today’s crisis of a pension decades from now? And retirees who waited three years — for what? Owaisi’s sayings have a ring to them amid burgeoning job troubles, when everyday grievances clog social media.
Defending the move, EPFO says it ensures future benefits. Pushing out the lock-in from two months to 12 months, they say, mitigates service breaks that render members ineligible for pensions — which take 10 continuous years to earn. “This will make it easier for claimants to qualify for pensions,” the body posted, using terms that framed it as a shield against knee-jerk withdrawals that could derail dreams of retirement.
But as Owaisi’s salvo increases public grumbles, the debate roars: Is this prudent planning or punitive penny-pinching? As millions of manufacturing workers stare down their PF balances in the face of economic winds, the middle class waits -and watches.
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