Centre moves to take states on board for wage codes' roll-out

New Delhi: In an attempt to avoid any post roll-out fiasco as it happened in the case of controversial farm laws, the Ministry of Labour and Employment has moved forward to take all stakeholders on board prior to the implementation of new wage codes.

As a part of bringing all states on board and discuss issues related to new wage codes, the Labour Ministry is organising 'National Labour Conference of Labour Ministers and Labour Secretaries of States/UTs' after a long gap of eight years.

The conference is scheduled to be held from August 25 to August 26 at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh and it will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Given that labour falls under the concurrent list of the Constitution, taking states on board is 'must' for the successful implementation of new wage codes that ensures total social security to all types of workers, including unorganized workforce, as opposition from any state may put the "labour reforms" under the scanner.

According to a senior labour ministry official, the Prime Minister would address the conference virtually on Thursday.

The official further informed that it is the first-of-its-kind conference of the labour minister which is being organised to seek the feedback of state counterparts after 2014. Earlier such conferences were held in a different format before 2014, the official said.

The conference will deliberate on integrating e-Shram portal for onboarding social security schemes run by Central government and state governments to universalize social protection to workers and to improve employment opportunities for all.

At present over 28 crore informal sector workers under 400 different occupations have registered themselves.

The conference will also discuss Swasthya se Samriddhi concept where deliberations will be on improving medical care and services through ESI (employee state insurance) hospitals run by state governments and integration with PMJAY (Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna).

The official said that the meeting would be presided by Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav and discussion would also be held on framing of rules under four Labour Codes and modalities for implementation along with development of Portals for licensing, registration, returns, inspections etc.