State Labour Dept & KMC undertake SSY scheme awareness drive
Kolkata: The state Labour department has joined hands with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to take up a massive awareness drive about the Samajik Suraksha Yojana, a social security scheme.
Awareness camps will be held in all the 144 wards of KMC for three days from February 14 to 16 with the aim to enrol more and more unorganised workers under this social security scheme. A training camp was organised at Uttam Mancha on Thursday involving officials who will be responsible for holding these camps for enrolment of labourers.
Commissioner of state Labour department Jawaid Akhtar said that over 5 lakh unorganised labourers are there in Kolkata among which 2,85,528 have already enrolled themselves under the SSY scheme. "We aim to include all the unorganised labourers in SSY so we are holding the three-day camps in all the wards of KMC so that those unorganised labourers who have been left out can come and enrol themselves," he added. Indrani Saha Banerjee, Member Mayor in Council of KMC's social sector said that forms have already been made available at all the borough offices in the city. The councillors have been asked to make arrangements for distributing enrolment forms among the unorganised labourers in their respective wards and help them in filling up the forms so that there is not much queue for collecting forms.
The state government has extended assistance to the tune of Rs 1,630 crore since 2011 after the Mamata Banerjee government came to power. The assistance given during the period 2000 to 2011 (during the Left Front rule) was only Rs 9 crore.
The new and consolidated SSY for the unorganised workers was notified on April 3, 2017. The five existing social security schemes for unorganised workers, namely, State Assisted Scheme of Provident Fund for Unorganised Workers (SASPFUW), West Bengal Unorganised Sector Workers' Health Security Scheme (WBUSWHSS), Social Security Scheme for Construction Workers (BOCWA), West Bengal Transport Workers Social Security Scheme (WBTWSSS) and West Bengal Beedi Workers' Welfare Scheme (WBBWWS) were combined to create this new scheme.
