New Delhi: The government told the Lower House of the Parliament on Monday that over 30.98 crore unorganised workers, including migrant workers, have registered on the eShram portal until August 5.
The figure, given in answer to an unstarred question by Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee, asked for a detailed state and Union Territory-wise segregation of registrations, with Uttar Pradesh leading the tally at over 8.39 crore workers, followed by Bihar, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh.
The eShram portal, which was introduced on August 26, 2021, was aimed at building a national database of unorganised workers, including migrant labourers, connected with Aadhaar.
The portal enables workers to self-register and seeks to enable the distribution of social security and welfare programmes.
The government reaffirmed that the database of the portal is self-registration based and its numbers represent workers from every state and union territory, not necessarily any migrant workforce.
On the very particular question of reports about West Bengal migrant labourers being arrested in other states for using Bengali, the Ministry of
Labour and Employment could not confirm any such fact. It noted that “policy” and “public order” are domain issues of individual states and Union Territories and are their responsibility to prevent, detect, investigate, and prosecute crime using their own law enforcement agencies.
The government pointed out that legal protections available under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, exist.
It requires establishments employing interstate
migrant workers to be registered and contractors to be licensed.
It provides a minimum wage to workers, journey and displacement allowances, residential accommodation, medical facilities, and protective clothing.
Enforcement in the central sphere is done by means of inspection by the Central Industrial Relations Machinery, and state governments enforce the Act in their respective areas.
The ministry also continued to assert that it continues to be steadfastly committed to safeguarding the rights and well-being of migrant workers and requires states to ensure that there is no discrimination on the basis of language or origin.
The detailed annexure to the Parliamentary response enumerates the registered unorganised and migrant workers in each Union Territory and state, with West Bengal registering more than 2.64 crore registrations.