Less than 1% of labour cess spent on workers

Board sources say the main reason for workers not being benefited from the scheme is a provision in the central Act that makes it compulsory for beneficiaries to be registered with any of the 68 labour offices in the district or taluka where they are working. Unregistered workers are not covered under the scheme.

Board secretary A B Parmar said a worker had to produce a certificate of having worked for at least 90 days in a year at some project to get benefits under the scheme.

This certificate needs to be renewed and submitted every year in the respective district labour office.

According to Parmar,this condition was coming in the way of most workers securing these benefits. He said most private groups did not issue work certificates because they feared that workers could use the document to claim Employees State Insurance Corporation,provident fund and gratuity benefits which could reduce their profit margin.

According to Parmar,there are a total of 69,000 workers from government undertaking and another 39,000 from private groups registered with the labour offices across the state.

The total workforce employed at various construction sites in the state is estimated to be 15 lakh.

Bandhkam Mazdoor Sangathan secretary Vipul Pandya on Thursday submitted a memorandum to National Commission for Protection of Child Rights,demanding that the cess money collected by the government be transferred to a separate account of the board. The demands also include making changes in the provisions for hiking the scholarship amount and allowing the children of construction workers to continue getting student scholarships from other sources,like the state government.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India had,in its reports for 2009-10 and 2010-11,indicted the state government for having failed to do anything for the welfare of building and other construction workers despite collecting a huge amount as labour cess.