Spending of construction cess collected by States continues to be dismal. According to the Labour Ministry, 35 States and Union territories together collected ₹14,099 crore up to March 31, 2014 as cess for construction workers’ welfare, but used only ₹2,382 crore.

Kerala once again emerged as the best State in terms of spending the cess. The southern State, which houses about 2.21 million workers, collected ₹954.5 crore and spent ₹888.1 crore up to March 31.

The cess, which constitutes one per cent of the construction cost, is supposed to be collected and used for the welfare of construction of workers by State Governments and worker welfare boards, for which registration of workers is a must.

However, up to March 31, 2014, of the over 5 crore building and construction workers in the country, according to the National Sample Survey 68{+t}{+h} round, only a little over one crore workers had been registered, the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Vishnu Deo Sai, informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply on Monday.

Amongst the high spending States on workers’ welfare is Tamil Nadu, which houses about 4.10 million construction workers. According to the Ministry, Tamil Nadu collected ₹ 755.68 crore and spent ₹330.99 crore up to Match 31, followed by Chhattisgarh, which collected ₹324.45 crore and spent ₹177.94 crore and Madhya Pradesh, which collected ₹931.53 crore and spent ₹370.1 crore.

Among the poorest spenders are West Bengal, which collected ₹290.62 crore but spent only ₹4.59 crore, followed by Punjab, which collected ₹455.56 crore but spent only ₹10.24 crore, Andhra collected ₹993.94 crore but spent only ₹73.42 crore and Assam spent only ₹1.82 crore of the ₹205.09 crore collected. Gujarat, which also collected ₹190.22 crore spent a measly ₹ 0.41 crore on construction workers’ welfare.

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