Orissa Labour Welfare Board to help Construction workers

Umi Daniel

The Government of India in the Ministry of Labour and Employment have enacted the Building and Other Construction Workers( Regulation of Employment and Condition of Service) Act, 1996 with the objective of regulating the Employment and condition of Service of the Building and other construction workers and to provide their safety, health and welfare measures.

The Government of Orissa with a view to enforce the provision of the building and Other Construction Workers Regulation of Employment and Condition of Service) Act, 1996 have formulated rules namely the Orissa Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of employment and Condition of Service) Rules, 2002 and this has been published in the Orissa Gazette vide Government Notification No.9174-LE dt. 02.08.2002.

As per the Act, informal workers working in various governments, private sector, individual housing and other construction work will greatly benefit from setting up welfare boards at the state level and creation of corpus by getting 1% cess from the total cost of construction work going on in Orissa.

Orissa has already lost a huge amount of fund as there was delay in formulating the rules to collect cess from the huge infrastructure and construction work going on a big scale in various parts. As per a rough estimate more than 20,000 crores of construction work is going on in Orissa and since last 10 years, orissa would have lost 1000 crores as cess for its labour welfare board. It would have alone collected more than 500 crores from the national highway authority which was in operation in Orissa. The amount could have been used for the welfare of thousands of workers engaged in construction work.

Now since the Government of Orissa has formulated the rules and going to set up the State Labour welfare board with adequate staffing, the migrant workers who are mostly engaged in the construction work will get various social security benefits under its schemes. However, all the workers need to be registered at the labour office with necessary identification testimonies.

Following are some of the benefit which the registered labourers may be granted by the State Welfare Board.

Accident benefit,
Pension to the beneficiary on completion of 60 years of age,
family pension, invalid pension,
Death relief/funeral Assistance,
Loan and advances for construction of houses
Group insurance
Financial assistance for the education of the children of the beneficiaries
Medical expenses for treatment of major ailments of beneficiaries and the dependents
Maternity benefit to the female beneficiaries
Marriage benefits
Tool advances
Financial assistance for coaching in specialized subjects
Grant of loan or subsidy to a local Authority in any scheme connected with the welfare of the building/construction workers

The State Welfare board will formulate its plan for implementation of various labour welfare and social security schemes.

It is imperative that, the government of Orissa should take proactive role in setting the State Welfare Board to initiate collection of 1% cess to be kept in the corpus to be used for the migrant and unorganized workers engaged in the construction work. most importantly, the registration of workers need to be done on a war footing with awareness generation with the workers and full participation of the labour unions and civil society organisations.

Ref: Govt of Orissa L&E Dept.