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2 months on, GB Nagar admin yet to locate 18,000 registered labourers
NOIDA:
NOIDA:
Nearly two months have passed since the Uttar Pradesh government announced that construction workers in the state will get ₹1,000 each as financial aid amid the coronavirus pandemic, but the Gautam Budh Nagar administration has failed to locate almost half of such labourers registered with the labour department in the district.
Out of 38,409 registered daily wage earners, the district administration has no clue about 18,000 of them. The monthly financial assistance of ₹1,000 is being paid to workers as a direct benefit transfer (DBT) in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis. On March 21, chief minister Yogi Adityanath had ordered that ₹1,000 be provided to each of the 20.37 lakh construction workers registered with the labour department and to each of the 15 lakh self-employed cart owners, small shop owners and rickshaw pullers on an immediate basis.
According to GB Nagar deputy commissioner (labour) Pradeep Kumar Singh, of 38,409 bona fide workers registered with the district labour department, the bank account numbers of only 20,643 are available. “The amount of ₹1,000 has already been transferred to each of these accounts,” he said.
Singh further said that locating the remaining workers has become a tough task as such workers, mostly associated with construction companies, come once or twice in a year and return to their native places after two-three months.
“We are also contacting their employers. But most of the employers said they (labourers) didn’t return to their companies after a year or two. During this lockdown, our officials who are trying to locate such labourers’ details say that less than 10% of them available on the mobile phone numbers given at the time of their registration,” he said.
To locate the remaining workers, the labour department last month launched a mobile application ‘UPBOCW’ (Uttar Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board). After downloading this application, the remaining workers will have to be registered on this portal by providing their Aadhaar numbers. Once being registered, they will get a one-time password (OTP) and after entering the OTP, they will be eligible for the DBT, Singh said.
Meanwhile, the district administration has also initiated the DBT of same amount for the labourers from unorganized sectors, who are not registered with the district labour department.
According to a press statement issued by the district magistrate Suhas LY, a total of 8,737 labourers from unorganized sectors have been identified. “While 3,452 of them have received the DBT of ₹1,000 in their accounts on Saturday, the amount of ₹52,85,000 was disbursed in the bank accounts of remaining 5,285 on Monday,” the statement said.
