Who will make the customer pay farm labourers146; PF?

About 3,000 labourers with the Agriculture Produce Market Committee are waiting to see if the wholesale customer will shell out money for their provident fund and gratuity aggregating Rs 30 lakh.

About 3,000 labourers with the Agriculture Produce Market Committee APMC are waiting to see if the wholesale customer will shell out money for their provident fund and gratuity aggregating Rs 30 lakh. The levy charged is 30 per cent of the labourers8217; aggregate salary, which works up to Rs 90 lakh-Rs 1 crore a month.

On Wednesday, it will be known if commission agents have submitted the levy along with the salary of the labourers, done on the fifth of every month. Till September, the security net for the labourers came from farmers, who decided to stop paying last month on the basis of a High Court judgment of 2004. The commissioning agents, who till now used to collect this levy from the farmers, have refused to recover dues from customers as they will not be able to enforce it.

8220;We have not yet started charging our customers, a difficult task. We want the labourers to recover these dues themselves,8221; said president of APMC commissioning agents, Shivlal Bhosale. He argued that the labourers at the APMC should collect the levy charge from customers on their own.

8220;Commission agents have been collecting the levy charges from the farmers. After farmers refused to pay it, they were given the liberty to collect it from customers. Why should our labourers collect the dues from the customers? According to our law, the agents have to do it,8221; said Anil Lakaswar, chairman of the Pune Mahtari Mandal Board where salaries of the labourers are deposited.

The APMC is clear on recovering the dues from the commissioning agents. 8220;If they do not pay the levy charges on November 5, we will either revoke the licenses of these agents or recover it via arrears of land revenue recovery by attaching individual property,8221; said APMC administrator B J Deshmukh.

8220;Customers will refuse to pay the levy; then we will have to foot the bill. We are already paying one per cent market cess, which should technically be paid by our customers,8221; said another agent.

Pune APMC will be the second after Ahmednagar to tap the customer for the labourers8217; security net, for whom the additional cost will not be more than Rs 150 per tonne.

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On October 19, the government appointed a committee headed by principal secretary of cooperatives S K Goel, which decided on an interim basis that the consumer would pay the levy to the commission agent, who in turn would deposit it with the board.