Govt spends workers’ funds on laptops, washing machines!

NEW DELHI: Laptops and washing machines were bought out of a whopping Rs 29,000 crore fund meant for the welfare of construction workers and less than 10 per cent spent on the actual purpose. Terming this as a “shocking” and “extremely distressing” state of affairs, the Supreme Court has said that the funds, collected by the government through a cess under the construction workers law, were being “frittered away” and diverted, instead of being spent on welfare of the beneficiaries.

Making these observations, a Bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta has directed the Union Labour Secretary to appear before it on November 10 “to understand how the act was being implemented and why it was being misused, if not abused.” The “astonishing” details were given in an affidavit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) that the funds meant for construction work- ers’ welfare were spent to buy laptops and washing machines for them, that shocked the Supreme Court. The apex court had earlier asked the CAG to file a report on how crores of rupees meant for welfare of construction workers was being spent. It was hearing a PIL filed by NGO, National Campaign Committee for Central Legislation on Construction Labour, which has alleged that the statutory cess levied on real estate firms for the welfare of construction workers was not being utilised properly as there was no mechanism to identify the beneficiaries for extending the benefits. Asserting that there should be no further exploitation of construction workers by the states or welfare boards, the top court observed that the CAG has revealed a “shocking state of affairs” with regard to the utilisation of the cess collected under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996.