The Meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Members of Parliament for the Ministry of Labour and Employment was held in New Delhi on 27th March 2023 under the chairmanship of Shri Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister for Labour and Employment. The subject of the meeting was “Building & Other Constructions Workers (BOCW)”.
During the meeting, the committee was informed that Ministry of Labour & Employment had issued Model Welfare Scheme for the BOC Workers with guidelines to provide for life & disability cover, health & maternity cover, financial assistance for education of the wards of BOC Workers, transit accommodation, skill development and awareness programmes.
The members were apprised that the Ministry of Labour and Employment had launched e-Shram portal on 26th August, 2021 for creation of National Database of Unorganized Workers under which a total of 28.65 crore workers have been registered so far, out of which 2.60 crores are BOC Workers.
The Union Minister briefed the committee that this data of BoCW workers is being shared with the State Governments to enable them to provide security benefits to these workers and also elaborated on how the data on E-Shram portal is also being integrated with other Central Ministries to ensure availability of their respective welfare schemes to these workers.
The Minister of State for Labour and Employment Shri Rameshwar Teli was also present. The Members of Parliament of various political parties took part in the meeting. The MPs present were Shri Sunil Kumar Mondal, Shri Sushil Kumar Gupta, Smt. Sangeeta Yadav and Shri Vinay D. Tendulkar.
During discussions the Members praised the efforts of the Ministry and suggested for focused efforts to ensure delivery of social security schemes by the State BoCW boards and their integration with E-shram portal.
BOCW (RE&CS) Act.,1996 was enacted to regulate the employment and conditions of service of building and other construction workers and to provide their Safety, health and Welfares measures and other incidental matters.
BOCW Welfare Cess Act, was also enacted in 1996 to provide for the levy and collection of Cess on the cost of construction which is used to provide for several welfare activities for the BoCW workers under section 22 of BOCW (RE&CS) Act. The cess is collected by the State at 1 % of cost of construction. The responsibility to register the BoCW workers and administer the fund for their welfare is vested with the respective State BoCW Boards. As on 1st Nov 2022 a total of around 5.06 crores workers were registered by the State Boards.
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MJPS