New Delhi, May 11 -- Over 1,250 private trusts managing more than Rs.3.50 lakh crore life-savings of nearly 3.2 million employees will have to provide either "better or at least equal" benefits to their workers in comparison to terms offered by government-run Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), according to the new standard operating procedure (SOP). "Non-compliance by any private trust would result into cancellation of the exemption status," a senior official said, asking not to be named. Private or exempted establishments are companies that manage their own private provident fund (PF) trust rather than depositing employees' contributions into the central pool of EPFO. They are both public and private sector firms. The new and simplified SOP for exemption has been approved by EPFO's Central Board of Trustees (CBT) chaired by labour minister Mansukh Mandaviya, the official said. The new procedure would consolidate existing four SOPs and the exemption manual into a single comprehensive framework to reduce compliance burden and to promote ease of living, he added. The new SOP "reiterates and emphasises that benefits provided by an exempted establishment has to be better or at least equal to that provided by EPFO" and in order to protect members, the balances of inoperative accounts and non-KYC accounts have to be transferred to EPFO along with accrued interest, the document said. The new rule also restricted private trusts to pay arbitrary interests to its members and kept the cap to a maximum of 2%. "To preserve inter-generational equity, higher interest is kept at two hundred basis points above EPFO's rate of interest," the SOP said....