LATEST AMENDMENTS TO EMPLOYEES PROVIDENT FUND AND PENSION SCHEMES- MORE HARDSHIP FOR INTERNATIONAL WORKERS
This new amendment will cause major hardship to all International Workers coming from non
Social Security Agreement countries as well as their employer companies. Additionally, if International Workers not permitted to withdraw the Provident Fund amount until the age of 58, huge sums of money will get blocked in their Provident Fund accounts and may well be lost and it will be extremely challenging for them to come back and reclaim this money upon retirement. Additionally, the proposal to credit the accumulated balance of Provident Fund to an Indian bank account (namely State Bank of India) would also create difficulty as International Workers would need to hold the Indian bank account until the age of 58, which may not be practically viable. Moreover, for the existing International Workers the change will be even more significant since many of them were caught unawares by the 2008 amendment and have been contributing to Provident Fund at the cost of their take home pay under the belief that they would be able to recover these contributions at the time of repatriation of their home country. Now, they are faced with a harsh situation where they will have to wait for many more years before they get their rightful dues.
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