NEW DELHI: The labour ministry has begun consultations with industry bodies on migrant worker welfare, focusing on housing, portability of benefits, and registration systems, according to people aware of the matter.
In a meeting held on May 19, participants discussed housing access and portability of welfare benefits for migrant workers. They also examined whether e-Shram registration could be linked to a unique identifier for migrant workers, or whether dedicated e-Shram cards should be issued to improve portability of entitlements, the people said. Stakeholders present included officials across ministries, corporate representatives, think tanks and academia, and civil society.
The labour minister has asked the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to continue deliberations and return with more detailed concept notes on possible implementation models in a follow-up meeting likely to take place next month.
The discussions come amid recent labour unrest across industrial hubs such as Noida and Manesar, where workers have protested low wages, contractualisation, poor working conditions and lack of social security benefits.
Concerns have also risen over the economic fallout of the West Asia conflict and a possible increase in crude oil and LPG prices. Policymakers and industry bodies have warned that higher energy costs and supply-chain disruptions could increase financial stress on factories and MSMEs, potentially leading to wage delays, layoffs and distress migration in labour-intensive sectors.
The first meeting focused on what could be done to improve living and working conditions for migrant workers, along with challenges in delivering benefits to them. The next round is expected to centre on implementation. CII has been asked to consult workers and organisations working with migrant labour, including construction worker associations and trade unions, to better understand on-ground constraints in accessing welfare schemes. After the third such meeting, a concrete action plan is likely to be prepared based on the outcomes of the discussions.
“CII has been asked to prepare concept notes on all the different aspects and then we will again sit and discuss. In the third sitting, we will finalise a concrete action plan to go forward,” said a senior official.
Officials said implementation challenges such as low literacy levels, language barriers and difficulties in completing online registration were also raised.
“For example, we might say that we need to register all migrant workers online but most of them would be illiterate. How will they register online? Then we might need to consider using vernacular language. So the ministry has said we may need to communicate with them in their vernacular language,” the official added.
The consultations come after a national roundtable organised by CII in Coimbatore in January, following which the industry body prepared a recommendation note on migrant worker welfare that was presented to the labour ministry at last week’s meeting.
According to a copy of the note seen by Business Standard, CII proposed measures to improve welfare delivery and living conditions for migrant workers, including easier portability of social protection benefits, simplified compliance requirements for employers, and stronger local support systems. The note recommended enabling access to benefits such as ration, healthcare and compensation across states, improving integration between national and state welfare systems, and creating facilitation centres for registration, grievance redressal and awareness. It also called for transparent recruitment practices, portable skill certificates, stronger workplace safety measures, and better access to healthcare and childcare services. On housing, the note suggested treating migrant accommodation as a formal labour and industrial issue through regulated worker housing and integration into urban planning.
“The welfare of migrant workers has gained importance with recent unrest among labour groups across the country. We are engaging with the government actively to see what improvement can be done,” said a CII member, on condition of anonymity.
Emails sent to the labour ministry and CII remained unanswered till press time.
Earlier this month, at the CII Annual Business Summit, Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said the government and industry must jointly develop mechanisms to respond to global crises that disrupt employment and worker welfare, particularly in industrial clusters.
“We need to set up a joint platform wherein the government can ask the relevant industry association in any such cluster to understand what is the government’s role in this crisis. We need to establish a mechanism to deal with this,” he had said.
Source: Business Standard
