Registration of building workers gains pace

HYDERABAD: The labour department’s statewide special drive for registration of construction workers is receiving good response. During the month-long drive since Feb 21 till date officials registered 41,146 workers with the department.Since the project’s launch in 2009, the department registered 12,33,859 construction workers in the state.The special drive has been suspended in the districts of Nellore, Warangal, Karimnagar, Adilabad and Mahbubnagar due to the by-elections and will be resumed soon, says Varahala Reddy, joint commissioner of labour, Hyderabad.During 2007-12 the state registered over 12 lakh labourers and collected a cess of over Rs 713 crore.The Hyderabad region has issued identity cards to 5,573 workers and collected Rs12,45,000 in cess from builders. Rangareddy district has added 1,738 workers to the list with a cess of Rs 19,24,770 collected from builders.The special drive entails registration of workers with the department, registration of the establishments hiring or employing them and collection of 1 per cent of the total estimated cost of the building from the builder. An ID card issued to a labourer has the registration number, details of his or her dependents, present and permanent addresses, details of bank account, etc.The worker, once registered, will become eligible for government welfare schemes. Dependents are eligible to receive compensation of Rs 2 lakh in case of accidental death and Rs 30,000 in case of natural death.A worker is also entitled to compensation up to Rs 2 lakh depending on the extent of the permanent disability. Women workers are entitled to maternity benefit of Rs 5,000. The other benefits include hospitalisation expenditure, funeral expenses, pension schemes and marriage schemes. According to Reddy, any worker who is aged between 18 and 20 years is eligible for registration with the labour department and has to have an experience of 90 days of work.“Considering the fact that the registration has to be renewed every year with a small fee of Rs 12, the department now accepts a 5-year renewal also for the convenience of the workers,” he says.“We expect 8,000 more labourers to be registered by the end of the drive,” says V Samrat Ashok Kumar, deputy commissioner of labour, Rangareddy district. The inferno at Gundlapochampally on February 18, which claimed seven lives and gutted several huts, made labour minister E Prathap Reddy calling for registration of all construction workers