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Centre launches e-portal for unorganised sector workers
New Delhi: The Centre on Thursday launched the eSHRAM-portal, “a database of urorganised workers” across the country to enable them better access to government schemes and benefits
New Delhi: The Centre on Thursday launched the eSHRAM-portal, “a database of urorganised workers” across the country to enable them better access to government schemes and benefits.
“The eSHRAM portal will be a game changer for having the database of crores of unorganised workers and linking them to social security and other schemes of the Government from time to time,” the government said in a statement.
“Though it is a big challenge but as always, the entire country has risen to such type of challenges. The eSHRAM portal would be handed over to the States/Union Territories by Shri Bhupender Yadav, Hon’ble Union Cabinet Minister for Labour & Employment, Environment, Forest & Climate Change in august presence of Shri Rameswar Teli, Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Petroleum & Natural Gas tomorrow,”
The government had said that it will introduce a digitised platform for migrant workers that will enable authorities to direct state-run benefits to them and intervene during crisis, people aware of the matter said on Sunday.
On June 29, the apex court, while hearing a case on the plight of workers in the unorganised sector, set a deadline of July 31 for the government to “prepare a mechanism” for the registration of such workers.
Last year, tens of thousands of low-paid workers made an exodus on foot from major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai under without much food or money following the stringent national lockdown during the first wave of Covid-19. In September 2020, then labour minister Santosh Gangwar told Parliament that the government had no data on how many migrants left the cities or how many of them died in the lockdown.
The migrant workers’ portal is expected to fill this gap. It is a joint venture between the labour and employment ministry and common service-centres (CSC) run by the electronics and information technology ministry, the people quote above said.
“The portal is fully ready and we will be in a position to begin registration of workers anytime and possibly go live by next week,” a labour ministry official aware of the matter said on condition of anonymity.
The platform will allow migrants to register themselves and secure a unique ID to access the portal from a CSC. The CSCs are points of access to a host of government digital services across the country and there are nearly 400,000 of them. “The ID can be used to access government schemes and services, irrespective of their place of stay,” an IT ministry official said, asking not to be named.
Workers will be registered as and when they apply and that could take time. “But we will launch a big awareness drive so that nobody is left behind,” said the labour ministry official.
Workers in the informal economy are estimated to contribute nearly 50% to the country’s gross domestic product. “One is not clear given the humongous task of registration whether this project will be completed in the near future. The first part is registration, of course,” said KR Syam Sundar, an economist with the Xaviers Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur.
According to Sundar, the Supreme Court is aware of the “governments’ apathy in complying with critical procedural requirements concerning unorganised workers over the (past) decade and a half”.
