New Delhi, Oct. 15 -- Unemployed members of retirement fund body EPFO will now be able to withdraw their provident fund corpus after 12 months of being out of a job, it announced on October 13.

The decision to amend the scheme was taken by apex decision making body of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), the Central Board of Trustees headed by Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, in a meeting held on Monday.

This comes at a time when companies like TCS are announcing layoffs across the country.

According to the new rules of EPFO, unemployed employees will be able to withdraw their final PF amount after 12 months of unemployment. The final PF pension withdrawal must be made only after 36 months.

This is up from the current ...