: The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has earned a negative return of 9.54 per cent on its Rs 5,920 crore investment in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) since August last year, prompting labour unions to demand a roll-back of the decision to park funds in stock markets.The market value of investments of Rs 5,920 crore in the ETFs in the current fiscal year was Rs 5,355 crore on February 29, 2016, according to per an analysis of equity investment by retirement fund body EPFO.The analysis of EPFO investments in equity market will be placed before the Central Board of Trustees - the apex decision making body, headed by the Labour Minister, in its meeting on March 17.EPFO started investing in ETFs in August last year after the CBT in March cleared proposal to invest in equity markets. The board specified that it will invest 5 per cent of incremental deposits in the current fiscal year.However, the Finance Ministry has allowed private provident funds to invest a minimum of 5 per cent and a maximum of 15 per cent in equity and equity related schemes.Trade unions have been opposing the decision to invest in equities or equity-linked schemes in view of market volatility."We have been opposing investments in the stock market. We will also raise this issue in the next meeting of CBT on March 17. We are custodian of poor workers money and safety of their provident fund is our concern," Hind Mazdoor Sabha Secretary and EPFO trustee A D Nagpal said."The decision to invest in equity market was wrong. We will demand for rolling back of this decision in next meeting of CBT. We cannot continue with such loss-making investment," All India Trade Union Congress Secretary and EPFO trustee D L Sachdev said.EPFO is expected to receive incremental deposits of Rs 1.15 lakh crore in the current fiscal year. It manages a corpus of over Rs 8.5 lakh crore with subscribers' base of over five crore across the country.