Construction workers fail to get govt benefits

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 16

As a majority of the construction labourers are not registered under the State Labour Commission, it is affecting various services and benefits to be given to them under the labour Act and laws.

According to a rough estimate, the district has around 4 lakh construction workers, but the registration of only a few thousands has been completed so far. Monetary benefits in case of accidental and natural deaths, health and education facility to the dependants of labourers and pension cannot be availed by the labourers if they are not registered.

For not carrying forward the demands of construction labourers, the Punjab Nirman Mazdoor Union workers, along with district construction labourers, are on a seven-day strike. The workers have demanded the labour commission to provide an active offline as well as online system in the building and other construction workers welfare Boards for the registration of all the labourers in the region.

Harinder Singh Randhawa, general secretary of the union, said the Punjab Labour Department had issued instructions to its officials for the registration of construction workers on August 7 and 9 last year and that only online system would remain in existence to register the workers, renew their membership and provide them benefits as per the scheme, but this online system is not only time-consuming but has also reduced the registration efficiency to 30 per cent.

In the state, there are about 20 lakh construction workers, but up to December 2017, only 6,48,197 workers were registered and out of these, only 3,79,937 were live members. Harinder further said that most of the workers were illiterate and found it difficult to follow the technical guidelines. Also, many labourers don’t have mobile phones, therefore they are unable to submit one time password (OTP) during the process of online registration. Hence, an offline system for registration is also needed.

Ganga Prasad, president of the union, said although several applications had already been dropped in the Chief Ministerial Office, but due to the non-availability of any minister at the Labour Ministry, under the sate cabinet they don’t know who they should complain about it.