In first of its kind, Shri Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister for Labour and Employment, interacted with Human Resource Heads of Industry representing various sectors, including from manufacturing, staffing agency, automobile, construction, hotel industries etc.
The interaction was facilitated by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). Shri Sunil Barthwal, Secretary, Ministry of Labour & Employment, initiated dialogue and invited comments from participants on improving service delivery in Employees Provident Fund Organization and Employees State Insurance Corporation, Work from Home, better utilization of services of National Career Service Portal and for enhancing women participation in labour force besides others.
Shri Chandrajeet Banerjee, Director General, CII moderated the interaction with HR Heads of various organisations and welcomed this initiative of Ministry of Labour & Employment. He informed that CII is fully aware of its responsibility of generating decent employment and appreciated steps taken by the Government in addressing the situation of Covid, and continuous support to the manufacturing sector.
Representatives of various organisations appreciated formulation of four labour codes and requested for early roll-out. Suggestions given by representatives of industry inter alia included introduction of guaranteed employment in urban areas, reorient education curriculum to align with the emerging technologies, use of apprenticeship for employment generation.
Thanking all the participants for their valuable suggestions, Shri Bhupender Yadav assured them of full cooperation of the Ministry.
“For promoting female labour force participation rate, not only there should be higher participation in women in workforce but women should be seen at positions of decision-making”, said the Union Minister.
Shri Yadav also stated that in order to have collaborative approach involving employers and employees in the last meetings of Central Board of Trustees of EPFO and Corporation of ESI, he has constituted Committees for improving grievance redressal of 6.5 crore members of EPFO, strengthening technological interventions, capacity building, effective monitoring of ongoing projects and enhancing coverage under social security.
Since ESIC caters to medical needs of workers, the Minister informed that it has also been decided to set up centers for study of occupational diseases, in both the Hospitals at Alwar and Bihta (Patna). Scheme of free medical check-up for the insured persons in ESIC above the age of 40 years has been revamped and launched on pilot basis in five hospitals. He further mentioned that to monitor ongoing construction of hospital projects, a dashboard in ESIC has also been developed.
Shri Yadav, mentioned that evidence-based policy making and last-mile delivery are pillars of good governance and effective and targeted delivery of services. For this purpose, this Ministry has launched new surveys for migrant and domestic workers. Further, with the objective to create a comprehensive database in both for informal and formal sectors, besides an All India Quarterly Establishments based Employment Survey (AIQEES) for organized sector, an area based area-frame establishment survey has also been decided for establishments having 9 or less workers.
Results of the two quarterly establishment based employment surveys have been released. The report of second QES for the period, July to September 2021, highlights that the estimated total employment in 9 selected sectors is 3.10 crore which is higher by 2 lakh permanent jobs than that from period, April to June, 2021. The overall percentage of female workers has also registered increase and stands at 32.1% which is higher than first round of QES.
The Union Minister also mentioned about the success of e-Shram portal which allows self-registration of workers and maps their occupations in about 400 categories. At present, the capacity of e-shram portal stands at registration of 45 lakh unorganised sector workers per day which has increased from about 10 lakh per day, at the time of its launch in August 2021. Already more than 21 crore unorganised sector workers have been registered on e-shram portal. All workers registering on e-shram portal gets free insurance of Rs. 2 lakh under Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana and each worker gets a downloadable identity card, for which expenditure is borne by Central Government.
While concluding, the Minister said that such interaction would take place on regular basis with all stakeholders and sought cooperation of CEOs and HR Heads of the industry in policy making for the welfare of workers and for creation of decent employment.