‘Violating’ SC order, state govt uses labour cess for e-portal

JALANDHAR: In violation of the Supreme Court’s directions, the state government has utilised the labour cess amount from the building and other construction workers (BOCW) board for the development of e-labour portal, on Wednesday.

As per the information received under the RTI Act, a copy of which is with HT, the state labour department had diverted ₹25 lakh cess amount of BOCW board for the portal.

Despite the apex court’s August 2 order, in reference to its earlier order issued on February 2012 to all labour department including the Punjab, that states, “Funds available with the welfare boards shall not be utilised by the state for any expenditure.”

Under the BOCW Act, labour department has to spend the collected money only on the registered labourers.

CM Captain Amarinder Singh in presence of labour officials had launched an e-labour portal to enable workers to access the labour department services, on Wednesday.

Punjab labour commissioner Tejinder Singh Dhaliwal could not be reached for comments. labour department principal secretary Sanjay Kumar said, he was out of station and disconnected the call. The previous SAD-BJP government had also stalled the construction of skill development centres and labour sheds after the Union government on apex court order directed the state government to not spend BOCW board money on the construction work.

The registration of construction labourers with BOCW board has seen a sharp dip in last three months after labour department made online registration compulsory. As per the record, in August, 8,353 workers registered, in September 4,689 and over 3,000 registrations were done in October. During this period, mostly workers had registered through offline applications, which were pending with the department till August 7. Before August, the department used to register over 10, 000 workers every month.