Navigating New PF Rules: Do We Owe Provident Fund to Past Contract Consultants?

Hello, We work with a few companies on contract work, deploying niche skilled contract consultants with our clients. We also do not hire such contract consultants. It is only a contract agreement that we sign with them to deploy them with our clients. Generally, the duration of the contract is for 6 months, sometimes extending to 7 or 8 months. We pay them a daily or monthly rate.

Client's New PF Requirement

One of our clients is now asking us to pay PF for all our contract consultants. We are okay to pay the PF for the contract consultants currently deployed with our clients. However, our client is insisting that we pay PF for those who worked earlier and left the company long ago. Is there any rule, act, or regulation that mandates us to pay such consultants? This PF rule was newly introduced by our client; it was not in place before. Some of the consultants are unreachable, and we are unsure of what steps to take.

Please advise.

EPF Registration and Contribution Rules

Do you have your own EPF registration or not? If yes, then it was a violation of EPF rules for not paying the contribution of contract employees.

If you don't have EPF registration, then the eligibility criteria would be 20 for all employees, including the contract employees, and EPF is applicable from the day the strength reaches 20.

If it has never reached or exceeded 20 in the past, then simply issue an undertaking that your establishment has never crossed the required manpower for EPF mandatory registration (i.e., 20); hence EPF cannot be enforced on past employees.