The Government has proposed a new portal to register migrants and other workers from the unorganised sector, atleast 250 million labourers will be enrolled in next few years. The prime focus of this portal will be to provide a single window for concerns and social welfare to such unprivelliged workers, according to the government official.
The portal will be a key structure in digital system of help provided by the government for the people as it will be linked to various ongoing programmes and services, such as the medical care scheme Ayushman Bharat, or the subsidised ration scheme Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, and workers will be register directly through their through mobile phones, newly appointed Union labour secretary Apurva Chandra said. Making it and the other services work in streamlined manner in synergy.
“It’s good that the government has accepted our suggestion to register unorganized sector workers. If they have set the initial target to enrol 25 crore workers, it means they would primarily target the construction sector as most unorganised and migrant workers belong to that sector,” the labour panel’s head Bhartruhari Mahtab said.
Chandra also backed the recently enacted labour codes. “There will be a definite increase in fixed-term employment. Many industries had told us that they are keen to employ people during rush seasons or they wanted students in part-time work during their recess. Now, all these avenues will open,” he said.
The government is also planning to introduce a first official survey on migration of Indian workforce, covering both the seasonal and long term migration. To better understand the pattern and aspects of the same and how it affects the entire sector and the workers itself. All data will be collected via various modes and will be streamlined through the portal. It will assist the government to plan and help welfare-seekers.
The plight of migrant workers, desperate to return home in the middle of the lockdown, sparked criticism of the Union government’s handling of the Covid crisis. The labour ministry, lacking any independent headcount of migrant workers, failed to furnish specific data in Parliament on how many workers lost their jobs and how many died while returning home.
The ministry said that 10.4 million migrant workers returned home during lockdown, but experts suggested that this was merely the passenger data from Shramik special trains, and did not take into account workers who tried to return by bus, trucks, and other means. According to news reports, several workers and their family members died while trying to walk back or travel in overloaded trucks.
