Faced with arrears of Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) on account of default, the Employees Provident Fund Organisation on Friday announced the setting up of a directorate of recovery, apart from another directorate for audit.

The EPFO also said it would give 50 lakh social security numbers during this year.

"We have decided to establish the directorate of recovery and directorate of audit and confidence validity for expediting the recovery of arrears, of which about 70 per cent were locked in litigation," Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma told reporters in New Delhi.

The proposed directorate of recovery would maintain dossiers on large defaulters, apart from tracking delinquency and defaults.

At present, 70 per cent of the estimated PF arrears were locked up in litigations, including in high courts and BIFR courts, Singh said.

However, with the present internal recovery system, there was around 800 per cent increase in recovery after 1998, in comparison to before-1990s.

The yearly recovery was about Rs 750-800 crore (Rs 7.5-8 billion) since 1998; last year, it was about Rs 900 crore (Rs 9 billion), showing over 800 per cent improvement from 1990s. he said. The EPFO has filed about 7,000 criminal cases against defaulters and was doing everything to recover the dues, he said.

In Friday's meeting, it was also decided to set up a sub-committee to look into the inclusion of construction workers in the social security number; that would enable such workers to freely move their PF accounts when they switch jobs to other states, he said.