Gujarat to observe Vajpayee’s birthday as ‘Shramjivi Day’

Manas Dasgupta

Ahmedabad, December 18

The BJP government in Gujarat will celebrate the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birthday on December 25 as the “Shramjivi Day” and distribute “Shramjivi Cards” (labour cards) to over 1 lakh labourers in the unorganised sector.

Labour Minister Vijay Rupani said those receiving “labour cards” would not only get benefits of various Central and the state government schemes, but would also get insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh each the premium for which would be paid by the government.

He said the government had planned to organise “Shramjivi Kalyan melas” in 20 major cities and towns in the state on that day, including Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Godhra, Nadiad and other centres where the labourers in the unorganised sector would be registered and the labour cards issued to them. Gujarat, he claimed, would be the first state in the country to issue such labour cards. “The idea is to give them the benefits of various schemes run by the central and the state government. Besides, the labour and employment department will have a database of such labourers which will be utilised to enhance their skills to ensure better and more regular jobs for them,” Rupani said.

He said once the cards were issued, the labourers in the unorganized sector would be able to get the benefits of schemes like the Rashtriya Mazdoor Suraksha Yojana, Mukhya Mantri Amrutam Yojana, Jan Dhan Yojana and such other welfare schemes. “The state government is paying Rs five crores as insurance premium for accidental deaths of the labourers. But surprisingly we have come to know that very few families of the labourers were able to get the benefit of it. This card will create awareness among them and help them to secure the insurance benefit in the event of an accidental death of a labourer,” he said.

Rupani said as per the government’s estimates there were about 1 crore labourers in the unorganised sector in the state but the existing government database show only about 15 lakh labourers working in saltpans, construction and manufacturing industries, agricultural fields and other sectors, including in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. He said the state government would organise such “melas” from time to time to update its database and issue fresh cards to the newly registered labourers. “We want to cover the maximum number of labourers in the unorganized sector under the scheme,” he said.