new delhi to avoid harassment of employees retirement fund body epfo has directed its field offices to sensitise employers about the need to forward in time pf claims of outgoing workers all regional offices and subregional offices should sensitise the employers under their respective jurisdiction to comply with the provision of para 725 of the epf scheme 1952 where the employer is duty bound to forward duly filled in and attested claim application to the respective epf office within five days of receipt says a circular of epfo it is observed that some employers do not forward the claims submitted to them by their outgoing employees this leads to harassment of such outgoing employees and give rise to lodging of grievances with epfo it added the employees provident fund organisation epfo which manages a subscriber base of over five crore and a corpus of about rs 5 lakh crore has been working hard to reduce the number of public grievances and improve services delivery it may be made clear to all employers under your jurisdiction that failure to comply with provisions as contained in the para 725 will invite penal action as provided under the act and schemes wide publicity of these provisions and duty of employers may be given through seminars meetings press notes etc the directive said the body had recently asked its field staff to settle all grievance of subscribers within 30 days epfo has also started online settlement of pf transfer claims on changing jobs by members the epfo expects 12 crore claims in 201314 including around 13 lakh pf transfer claims during 201213 the epfo settled 10762 lakh claims 88 per cent of which were processed within 30 days as prescribed in the epf scheme 1952