Labour ministry urges states to fastrack e-Shram portal registrations

Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav on Friday urged states to fastrack registrations of unorganised workers on the e-Sharm portal so that they can avail of social security benefits. So far, more than 280 million workers under 400 occupations have registered on the portal against the initial target of 380 million.

Speaking at the valedictory session of the two-day Labour Conference in Tirupati, Yadav said since the subject of labour came in the concurrent list of Indian constitution, both the Centre and states needed to work in concurrence.

“(An) SOP (standard operating procedure) is being prepared for which a committee under the ministry has been constituted with members from states. Based on the SOP finalised by the committee, e-Shram data will be shared with states and these will return verified data. This will help states in making policy-driven decisions and implementation of welfare schemes," the labour ministry said in a statement.

The e-Shram portal is the first-ever national database of unorganised workers, including migrant workers, construction workers, gig and platform workers, etc. The Ministry of Labour & Employment has developed the e-portal for creating a National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW), which will be seeded with Aadhaar. 

It will have details of name, occupation, address, occupation type, educational qualification, skill types and family details, etc, for optimum realisation of their employability and extend the benefits of the social security schemes to them.

Highlighting the importance of data sharing and transparency in the delivery of welfare schemes, Yadav suggested that the government circulate a working paper on how to integrate the National Career Service, e-Shram, ASEEM (Atmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping) and the data of building and construction workers for better policy making.

He expressed hope that suggestions received to strengthen the working of Employee State Insurance (ESI) scheme will also be taken into account and Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) will undertake a review as to how the state medical colleges can be expanded in states.

On the contentious issue of implementing four labour codes, Yadav expressed hope that the suggestions given by the various state governments will be incorporated and there will be a positive development on the issue. He expressed hope that all stakeholders will work for the welfare of workers to fulfil the vision 2047.

Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) in a statement termed the conference as the “Minister-Bureaucrats conclave” as the workers who are the biggest stakeholders in and their unions were kept out. CITU slammed the government’s failure to hold a tripartite Indian Labour Conference during the last seven years, since 2015 which is supposed to be held every year.