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‘90% of labourers in India still uninsured’

Mumbai: India’s largest app for construction workers and contractors, projecthero, has released its app usage report ahead of 74th Republic Day. Its statistics for 2022 show a concerning picture: majority of contractors across major Indian cities are not paying labourers the government-mandated minimum wage. Delhi is the lowest paying among all cities, while Hyderabad is the highest. Moreover, less than 10 per cent of jobs make contributions to the employee’s Provident Fund and provide Employee State Insurance coverage. This data has been collated from the jobs posted and application patterns on the app.

Commenting on the report, Satya Vyas, Founder and CEO of projecthero, said, “Due to poor technological penetration, the construction market has been operating in an opaque manner. This opacity has allowed people to get away with paying low wages, violating legal provisions, and demonstrating bad behaviour. Additionally, over 50 million workers still have to find work through informal means, and over 1 million contractors still rely on references to get business. There is no singular platform where every stakeholder is present and is incentivised to protect their reputation. Thus, at projecthero, we are building a network for the construction industry where people with good reputations will see more and more work coming to them, along with other benefits. Considering the scale at which we are operating and our deep tech capabilities, we felt that it was our responsibility to publish this data for everyone to see.”

Overall, across the major cities of India (Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune in this case), construction workers are not being paid government-mandated daily minimum wages.

This trend is most prominent in the case of unskilled labourers. While 90.9 per cent of helper jobs in Delhi pay less than the minimum wage (Rs 711), the percentage is 90.4 per cent for Bengaluru, 88 per cent for Pune, and 87.3 per cent for Mumbai. Hyderabad is the best at 78.5 per cent.

On average, 87 per cent of construction helpers are not paid minimum wage. For technician jobs, Delhi ranks at the bottom, with 66.5 per cent of jobs paying less than the minimum wage (Rs 788), and Bengaluru at 65.8 per cent is marginally better. Chennai is the best, with 44 per cent of jobs paying less than the minimum wage.

As for supervisor jobs, for which the minimum wage is Rs 866, 26.7 per cent of jobs in Chennai do not meet the daily wage threshold. This is the lowest across all cities. Conversely, Pune has the highest percentage of jobs not paying the minimum wage, with 42.4 per cent of supervisor jobs not meeting the wage threshold.

Hyderabad was the Highest Paying While Delhi Is the Lowest

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