New Delhi: Interstate migrants received special attention in the Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code introduced by the government in Lok Sabha on Saturday.
From setting a salary threshold, which allows them to register in an online database, from the provision of an annual “travel allowance” to offering the option of portability in the public distribution system and the benefits of the construction cease, migrants have much to rejoice from the account.
The bill says all those workers earn up to ₹18,000 per month will be covered under this law and it can change if the government wishes to change it. “Under an agreement or other arrangement for such employment and collects wages not to exceed the amount of eighteen thousand rupees per month or a higher amount that can be notified by the Central Government from time to time,” the bill says.
Under current provisions, migrants are covered by labor law only when they are hired through contractors. This means that it excludes millions who travel themselves to find work in cities and industrial clusters.
The OSH code also seeks to provide for the possibility of offering options to migrants to take advantage of the benefits of the Public Distribution System (PDS), either in their state of origin or host. Migrants from the building and construction sector will also be able to benefit from the benefits of the construction cessation fund in the state where they are employed, if the bill is passed. The portability of the benefits of the build process is an enabling provision, but needs clarity, as it is a consolidated fund and not a unified corpus.
Migrant workers suffered a major blow after the national lockdown imposed to curb the coronavirus in India, with government data showing that more than 10 million of them left for their villages after job loss and income loss after the lockdown, which began on March 25. Millions walked home and several hundred died during that time. The government has faced constant criticism from opposition parties and members of civil society for the plight of migrants and how their unplanned closure affected millions of poor people.
The OSH code merges 13 existing labor laws, including the Factories Act, the Contract Labor (Regulation and Abolition) Act, and will be applicable to establishments that hire at least 10 workers.
On the registration of migrants through a database, the occupational safety and health code says that the central government and the state government in question must collect, compile and analyze occupational safety and health statistics in the form and the manner prescribed. The central government and the state governments will maintain the database or registry, for interstate migrant workers, electronically or otherwise on the portal and in the form and manner prescribed by the Center.
This Code, once promulgated, will allow an interstate migrant “to register … on said portal on the basis of self-declaration and Aadhaar.”
However, the Ministry of Labor has removed the mandatory requirement for employers to “provide and maintain adequate residential accommodation” for migrants during the period of their employment. The OSH code has also removed a travel allowance that migrant workers were supposed to receive from contractors.
However, the bill introduces an annual travel subsidy as the travel subsidy and the “employer shall pay, to each interstate migrant worker employed in his establishment, in a year a lump sum of fare for the round trip. to their place of origin “. from the place of their employment, in the manner that takes into account the minimum service by right, periodicity and type of trip and any other matter that may be prescribed by the appropriate government. “
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