The GP Fund issue

Wide ranging fiscal, socio-economic and services reforms proposed by the state government in the recently concluded Budget session of the state legislature, including relaxation in GPF settlement norms, have brought great relief to every section of the people, especially the state employees.

The people-friendly Budget and numerous area specific legislation passed in the session by  Mehbooba Mufti led coalition government and instant follow up rules reflects the sincerity of the government towards addressing the issues of the general public.

   

The reforms are numerous and mostly aim at freeing the system of confusions, simplifying money matters and enforcing fiscal discipline at all levels. As per the government the General Provident Fund system had only been mismanaged for the last 60 years. Given that there was no proper accounting of outflows and inflows of funds as also no dedicated provisioning for funding the outgo on GP Fund advances/withdrawals The Finance Minister recently informed the state legislature that for the moment, while the inflows to the fund have expectedly decreased, outflows are steadily increasing. The state owes around Rs. 20,000 crore to its retired or retiring employees as GP Fund.

For fiscal discipline the government has issued comprehensive guidelines to enforce   wide-ranging public expenditure reforms announced by Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu in the State Legislature earlier this month. The government has already announced to set up a corpus fund of Rs 12,000 crore, which will be used for making GPF payments to the Government employees in future.

The overview of the guideline, which has made the State Government legally bound to expedite resource utilization, shows that these in a way aim at to prevent pilferage of funds and ensure that the benefits reach to every single individual.

Laws have been made to ensure that the common man may not face any hindrance to get his dues and effective administrative services. To ensure payback of every single penny of people’s savings is another major concern of the government. In a similar major relief to its employees, the government has relaxed norms for settlement of final general provident (GP) fund refund cases by introducing several provisions in special cases.

The government has recently come up with detailed provisions of relaxation to ease the cumbersome provisions. Pertinently, the government’s move came about a month after an announcement was made in this regard   by Finance Minister Haseeb A Drabu in his budget speech in the state legislature.

Drabu had said that the employees face considerable difficulties in the settlement of their GP Fund cases at the time of their retirement. They were asked to bring documents and meet certain eligibility like production of the certificate relating to withdrawals since the joining of their service.

“After the introduction of new rules, the Government employees will, henceforth, be required to furnish only credit and debit statements for the last five years for their final GP fund withdrawal”, Drabu had said in his budget speech. Following the announcement made by Drabu, the finance department issued the formal orders in this regard.

As per the orders issued by the principal secretary finance,  the employees at the time of settlement of final GP fund (refund) claims, have to furnish only last five years debit and credit statements showing withdrawals (both refundable and non-refundable) and subscriptions made by the subscriber. “If the information for such period is not readily available with the drawing and disbursing officer due to non-availability of records (having gutted in fire or due to any other reasons like floods, theft, any other natural calamity), an indemnity bond (as per format available in the GP Fund Manual and recast vide a government Order in 1999) shall be obtained from the concerned subscriber and his nominee(s)/successors (s) indemnifying the Government from any loss arising due to any un-accounted sum of advance and withdrawal as may be located subsequently”.

The indemnity bond, duly furnished by the retired subscriber/his nominee(s)/ successor (s), shall be accepted by the DDO wherefrom the GP Fund refund claim of the subscriber is forwarded to concerned Fund Office, the order said.

The order said while accepting indemnity bond, the DDO shall ensure that averments made by the subscriber/his nominee(s)/ successor(s) in the indemnity bond, recording therein the reasons of non-availability of records, are supported by collateral evidence like FIRs.

All other provisions regarding the settlement of GP Fund final refund claims as contained in the GP Fund Manual or any other instructions, orders, guidelines and rules shall be deemed to have been modified to the above extent, the order reads.

Indeed the easing of the procedure would help the government employees a lot, particularly whose records are misplaced due to some reasons, including gutting of office buildings and floods, which are common occurrences in the state.

There are several incidents of record getting destroyed due to office building being torched by violent mob or armed men or accidental fire. Several hundred employees bear the brunt of such incidents particularly at the time of retirement. However, the major problem in this regard has emerged after major office records were damaged in the backdrop of 2014 floods, which devastated most parts of the state.   

In this background, the provisions easing the formalities for GPF withdrawal is definitely going to help a large number of state government employees.

(The author is Member Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Council)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

thirteen + eleven =