Saddled with huge arrears of over Rs 1,511 crore (Rs 15.11 billion) from the state and central public sector undertakings and the private sector, the Employees Provident Fund Organisation on Tuesday launched a major action plan, including the attachment of property and freezing of bank accounts, to recover money from them.

"The 'Compliance-04' programme will include the attachment of property and bank accounts of defaulters, launching of prosecution with criminal courts, arrest of defaulters and appointment of receivers," Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma told reporters while announcing the programme in New Delhi.

Concerned over the huge gap between default and recovery, Verma said the multi-pronged campaign would target defaulting establishments, including exempted ones, which had misappropriated workers' dues or had failed to pay them their money and meet the legal obligations voluntarily.

"The over-arching objective of this programme is to ensure that every rupee due to the worker under the EPF Act is recovered from the employers and deposited into the workers' respective accounts," he said.

In an attempt to tone up the recovery structure of EPF, Verma said all the defaulters had been given one month's time to pay up the arrears due to the workers, failing which their names would be put up in the website.

All nodal ministries would be asked to blacklist them, while banks and financial institutions would be instructed to put a freeze on credit line for these companies, he said.

The minister said the central PSUs owed Rs 297 crore (Rs 2.97 billion), state PSUs Rs 339 crore (Rs 3.39 billion) and the private sector Rs 348 crore (Rs 3.48 billion).