The government on Saturday approved the proposal of bringing industries with ten or more employees under the ambit of Employee's Provident Fund (EPF) against the earlier limit of twenty or more workers.

The decision on revision in the rate of interest of the EPF corpus fund for the year 2008-09 was deferred till the next meeting of the EPFO.

A high-level meeting of board members of Central Provident fund chaired by Union Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes decided that the industries with ten or more employees will have to contribute towards the EPF accounts from now on.

"The ceiling for the industries have been revised and now any industry with ten or more employees will have to deduct EPF money of the employees," Fernandes said. Currently, industries with twenty or more employees are covered under the ambit of EPF.

"It was a major decision and there are several industries that were required to be covered under the EPF. There was resistance from the part of the industries but then it was in the favour of employees," CITU leader and a member of the EPF board W V Vardharajan said.

"We want that the rates should be revised. The current rate is not enough. The government has to take the rising inflation into consideration before forming any opinion on the revision in the rate of interests," he said.

The matters that came up during the meeting were decisions on constituting executive and sub committees and delegation of financial powers to executive committees.

The board also took up the issue of industries faltering in paying the EPF money. These industries are putting up requests before the board about giving relaxation in damages, Vardarajan said.

"There are cases when industries come to the board with such requests. We have not decided anything about it today but we will look into the issue," he said.