Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Drive to protect interests of migrant workers

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala government has intensified the measures to protect the interests of migrant workers from other States in the wake of the reports that the present institutional mechanisms are not adequate to meet the requirements in view of their increased flow to the State in recent times.

“We have taken some steps in this regard in the last one year, and there is some improvement in the lot of the migrant workers now in the State. But they are not adequate, and we are launching more steps in the coming days,” Minister for Labour P.K. Gurudasan told The Hindu here on Thursday.

The Minister said the main lacunae in the sector were payment of low wages, work for long hours and lack of decent living space and medical facilities. But the Inter-State Migrant Workers’ Act, 1979 has stringent provisions to prevent such harassment. The State’s move is to intensify the implementation of the Act, through appropriate institutional mechanisms, Mr. Gurudasan said.

State Labour Commissioner K.S. Premachandra Kurup said that as per the figures currently available with the government there were 1,15,584 workers from different States in Kerala. He gave their State-wise split-up as Tamil Nadu — 50,989, West Bengal — 8,459, Andhra Pradesh — 4,150, Orissa — 15,768, Bihar — 17,139, Karnataka — 4,769, Uttar Pradesh — 4,360, Assam — 1,510, Madhya Pradesh — 867, Delhi — 800, Rajasthan — 2,663, Jharkhand — 1,120, Gujarat — 1,687 and Maharashtra — 1,303.

“Evidently, this is a gross underestimation. We have already asked the Labour Department officers across the State to collect a more accurate picture on the number of inter-State migrant workers in the State by month-end, so that we will be able to work out a targeted programme for their welfare,” Mr. Premachandra Kurup said.

He, however, conceded that it would be possible to authentic the data on migrant workers only in the organised sectors such as construction, road works and cable-laying operations, who had been brought to the State by licensed contractors. “There are many agencies which deploy migrant workers saying that they (the workers) have come on their own. We can only make statistical projections on such migrant workers in the unorganised sector, based on the data from the organised sector.”

The Minister said that as per the Act, contractors who were bringing workers from other States to Kerala had to deposit a months’ salary or Rs.1,000 with the local Labour Department officials concerned.

They are also supposed to give minimum wages to workers as per the prevailing norms in Kerala and pay overtime allowance for extended working hours. Similarly, the workers will have to be provided decent accommodation and medical facilities besides travel allowance.

Labour officials in the State have been directed to be more vigilant to ensure that the provisions of the Act are strictly enforced, Mr. Gurudasan said.

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