Infosys, HCL, TCS employees availing EPF advances the most

The employees working with major IT companies have availed the maximum Employees' provident fund (EPF) advances under COVID-19 window.

The workforce of the likes of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), HCL Technologies, and Infosys utlilised most of their EPF accumulations in the April-July period.

Over 33,000 employees at TCS, availed COVID-19 advances totalling Rs 1.5 crore during the said period, data shared by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) showed.

Also Read: Only 4.19 lakh net jobs created in April and May 2020: EPFO

EPFO data revealed that out of the top five private exempted companies in terms of the number of employees who have availed of the coronavirus advance benefit, three belong to the IT (information technology) sector - Infosys, TCS and HCL, as mentioned in a report in Financial Express.

Collectively, their employees constitute around 17 per cent of the total claims for advances settled during the April-June period. Amongst these, TCS topped the list followed by HDFC Bank (12,921), HCL (11,957), Infosys (5,534) and Maruti (2,146), in order.

Following the coronavirus outbreak, EPFO offered its members the window to avail of advance not exceeding three months' basic wages, as well as dearness allowances or up to 75 per cent of the amount standing to the credit of their respective accounts.

Also Read: 12 lakh EPFO members withdraw Rs 3,360 cr retirement savings during lockdown: FM

A handful of exempt establishments manage the PF accounts of their employees while remaining are under the administrative control of the EPFO. Although they keep the PF money with themselves, these companies tractor the pension portion to the EPFO.

An approximate Rs 50,000 crore corpus is managed by around 1,550 establishments belonging to public, private, and co-operative sectors.

All in all, a total of 3,04,681 EPFO members from approximately 685 exempt establishments have availed the EPF facility to pull out Rs 3,128 crore from their accumulations in April-July.