Following material was distributed in the Press
Conference addressed by the Minister of State (IC) for Labour & Employment,
Shri Bandaru Dattatreya, here today.
The Ministry
of Labour and Employment strives to safeguard the interests of workers from the
country’s organized and unorganized sectors, while simultaneously providing an
enabling environment for industry. Labour is one of the most critical factors
of production. The Ministry of Labour & Employment is committed to promote
an environment conducive for the country’s inclusive growth and development.
The welfare
and social security of workers besides imparting training to the unskilled
labour force via vocational skills training, to improve their quality of life
through progressive policies, programmes, schemes constitutes the core
priorities for the Ministry.
Initiatives for
Organised worker:
Social Security for Organized Workers:
Initiatives by EPFO:
(i)
Digitization of complete database of 4,24,58,329 EPF subscribers and
allotment of UAN to each of them.
(ii)
UAN is being seeded with Bank account and Aadhar
Card and other KYC details for financial inclusion.
(iii)
EPF account of employee to be updated monthly
and at the same time he will be informed through SMS.
(iv)
Direct access to their EPF accounts and will
also enable them to consolidate all their previous accounts.
Initiatives
in Progress:
(i)
Special drive is being taken up for enrolling
contract and construction workers.
Initiatives
by ESIC:
(i)
Ceiling
on funds given to States increased from existing Rs.1500 per IP family to
Rs.2000 from 1.4.2014 with provisions of incremental increase every year
(ii)
State
Executive Committee to be constituted which would ensure availability of
medical/para medical manpower, drugs, monitor SST referrals and shall have
powers to empanel/de-empanel tie up hospitals and also powers for special
repairs i.e. Rs. 3 crore for 200 bedded and Rs.5 crore for more than 200 bedded
hospitals
(iii)
To
ensure wider access of medical care to Insured Persons(IP)/their families as
well as to non-IPs, the Corporation has taken up with all State Governments for
utilization of underutilized dispensaries/ hospitals of ESIS/ESIC to non-IPs
and vice a versa.
(iv)
Coverage
of ESI Act extended to 56 new areas in the country during 2014-15(upto
30.12.2014).
(v)
Completion
of 300 bedded hospital at Kandivali, Mumbai and 300 bedded portions at Alwar,
Rajasthan.
Initiatives for
Unorganised Worker:
1.
Social Security for Unorganized Workers:
Initiatives in progress
Issue
of Unorganised Workers Card as per the Act
(i)
Identification and registration of unorganized
workers as per the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act, 2008 leading to
creation of database of unorganized workers.
(ii)
Issue of portable, smart card to unorganized
workers with linkages with Aadhar No. and Bank account No.
(iii)
Convergence of three
Social Security Schemes for unorganized workers on a single platform namely RSBY, AABY and IGNOAPS.
(iv)
Workers Facilitation Centre as
Single point of contact for Social Security Scheme for Unorganized Workers.
(v)
Holistic monitoring of schemes for assessment of
access to and quality of services to unorganized workers.
2.
National Workers Vocational University:
(i) Vocational
stream is important for our economy. Recent studies have shown that only
around 18% of engineering graduates are employable due to lack of hands on
practice. People with strong skill background and strong knowledge background
are the important drivers in areas like advanced design, testing, research and
teaching/training.
(ii) Present
academic structure in our country lays great emphasis on class room learning
which is not suitable for providing career pathways to vocational trained
persons who acquire very significant experiential learning.
(iii) Therefore, in order to
provide career pathways in vocational stream leading to higher qualifications,
and also to develop proper research and develop infrastructure for vocational
training, a national institute of higher learning has become absolutely
necessary.
(iv) Germany has demonstrated
the success of vocational training by attracting large number of its population
to this stream. It has several universities offering courses of higher
learning which leverage experiential learning of skilled workforce.
(v) Building upon
the agreement in Indo-German cooperation, Ministry of Labour & Employment
has constituted a Steering Committee under the chairpersonship of Secretary,
Labour & Employment and with representatives from NSDA, Ministry of HRD, DEA,
Planning Commission, Universities and expertise institutions and CII to evolve
the objectives and other details of the proposed institution.
(vi) The Steering Committee
has agreed that the Ministry of Labour & Employment should immediately take
steps for setting up National Workers Vocational University in order to
leverage experiential learning, provide pathways for upward mobility and to
provide necessary framework and expertise in the areas of research and
institutional development for vocational training. The university would
facilitate continuous learning by Indian workforce. A Core Group is being set
up to work out further details.
(vii) Collaboration with
industry would be a key feature of the structure of the proposed university.
Industry would be associated with its various activities. The university would
also have partnerships with other universities/institutions of higher learning
and training institutions. It is proposed that the university would have
main campus at Hyderabad, Telengana with regional campuses at Ludhiana,
Kolkata, Gujarat and Chennai. Land/premises are already available at Ludhiana,
Kolkata and Chennai.
*****
NSK