The Labour Department is planning to hike cess collection from the construction sector by about Rs 500 crore in the next two or three months, Labour Commissioner B. Ramanjaneyulu has said.
At a press conference after an awareness meeting on AP Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Act here on Tuesday, he said the act aimed at benefiting an estimated 50 lakh construction workers by implementing several welfare measures for them from the 1 per cent cess collected. So far, he said, 17.5 lakh workers had been registered and a cess of Rs 1,050 crore collected but only Rs 64 lakh was spent on welfare activities. It was so because the cess was being collected from 2007 and implementation had begun only in 2010-11, he said. To implement welfare activities effectively district-level committees had been formed with the District Collector as Chairman and the Deputy Commissioner of Labour as convener, he said.
In the next six months, awareness programmes would be conducted and on-the-spot drives conducted at mandal-level to register the workers. A recent court order quashed 383 cases paving way for strict implementation. He said Visakhapantam was faring better than Hyderabad in collecting the cess.
The compensation due to labourers under Workmen Compensation Act must reach them and to achieve this meetings were being held with advocates, he said. The Labour Department’s drive against begging by children that began on January 26 would continue till February 15. Children begging would be sent to juvenile homes or Rajiv Vidya Mission’s bridge course. Mothers accompanying them would also be rehabilitated.