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State governments and Union Territories collected ₹33,602.61 crore as cess for welfare of construction workers, but spent only ₹7,601.38 crore, as on June 30, 2017, the government has informed Parliament.
“The balance amount of cess lying with the State governments/UTs is approximately ₹26,001.23 crore,” said Bandaru Dattatreya, Minister for Labour and Employment, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
Monitoring panel To ensure proper utilisation of this huge corpus, the Centre set up a monitoring committee on September 9, 2015 under the chairmanship of the Labour Secretary, the Minister said, adding that it had been “holding regular meetings.”
Under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, a one per cent cess is levied on the cost of construction incurred by employers or developers to create a fund for workers to take care of accidents, old-age pension, loans, medical expenses etc.
The responsibility of registering the workers, collecting cess and its utilisation lie with the State governments and State workers welfare boards.
Labour law violations The number of labour law violations has decreased in the past two years, the Labour Minister said in another written reply to the Lok Sabha. In 2015-16, the number of irregularities detected in compliance of various labour laws was 2,41,796 and in 2016-17, the number came down to 2,21,252, as per data available from office of Chief Labour Commissioner (Central).
Dattatreya said the number of inspections had increased to 36,067 in 2016-17, compared with 29,770 in 2015-16. The number of prosecutions launched against the violations also rose from 5,751 in 2015-16 to 6,691 in 2016-17, he added.
However, as per the official data, the number of inspections in some spheres has declined, such as under the Contract Labour Act, where inspections fell to 8,843 in 2016-17, against 10,593 in 2015-16.
Under the Construction Workers Act, inspections were lower at 1,372 in 2016-17, against 2,086 in 2015-16, while inspections conducted under the Minimum Wages Act declined to 9,151 in 2016-17, against 9,803 in 2015-16.
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