Nearly one out of four construction workers registered with the Delhi government’s welfare board may exist only on paper, a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, tabled in the Delhi Assembly on the first day of the monsoon session on Monday, indicated. The report said that despite claims of 6.96 lakh registered construction workers, only 1.98 lakh had complete records, with thousands of duplicate entries or those with faulty images. The audit report also stated that the government failed to ensure mandatory registration of establishments, utilisation of welfare funds, and inspections. “Duplicate images, images with no faces, and multiple registrations of the same face indicate several loopholes in the registration process. Since a robust computer algorithm would require exactly one face in each image, this indicates failure of the IT system to detect such images during registration,” it said. The report, Welfare of Building and Other Construction Workers, for the year ending March 31, 2023, was tabled by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta. According to the report, the Board of Construction Workers (BOCW) could provide a complete database of only 1.98 lakh out of 6.96 lakh workers stated to be registered with it. Of the 1.98 lakh beneficiaries, for whom images were made available for the audit, 1.19 lakh beneficiaries were linked with 2.38 lakh images — more than one image for an individual beneficiary. The report also observed that in the South and Northwest districts, 97 private establishments that deposited cess between April 2019 and March 2023 were not registered. “Similarly, 25 establishments involved in construction, as per information available on the Delhi Fire Services website, were also not found registered,” stated the report. “It clearly shows a lack of proactive action on the part of the Board to use various sources of information to identify and register eligible establishments,” it said. The report also said that Delhi lags behind the rest of the country in terms of renewal of registrations — 7.3% against the all-India rate of 74%. The report further pointed out that the previous government spent only 9.53% to 11.33% of its total funds on welfare schemes, except in 2021-22 when extra payments were made to help workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, benefits were given under only 12 out of 17 approved schemes. No money was spent on five schemes, including support for miscarriage, advance for purchase or construction of a house, and loans or grants to buy work tools or insurance, the report indicated. The report also showed that the board released Rs 46.08 crore to the Directorate of Education in March 2022 to help 58,998 children of construction workers with their education for the years 2018-19 and 2019-20.
