As many as 15,812 contractors and total 3,81,831 contractual workers have been registered on ‘Shramik Kalyan’ e-application till March 9. The portal was developed and launched by Indian Railways on October 1st, 2018 to ensure the compliance of provisions of Minimum Wages Act.

“E-Application ensures the compliance of provisions of Minimum Wages Act and also ensures that contractual workers working in Indian Railways get their rightful due by enforcing the contractors to regularly upload wage payment data into e-application. This helps railways as principal employer, in keeping vigil over wages disbursed by contractors to contract workers,” Indian Railways said in a statement.

Along with this, total 48,312 number of letter of acceptance (LOA), Rs 349590 lakh (more than Rs3495 crore) wage amount and about six Crores man-days are also registered on this portal across Indian Railways, it said.

All ‘Public Sector Units’ that work under the Ministry of Railways are also using this e-application.

The portal enables all the contractors of different units of Railways to register themselves on e-application and subsequently add work orders issued by different Railway units to them.

“The contractors have to create a profile of each contract worker engaged by him for the work and update the wages provided to him on a regular basis. There are checks in the portal to ensure that wages paid by the contractors conform to Minimum Wages fixed by the Government of India time to time,” it added.

 Railways’ bill passing authorities have to check whether the contract workers wage data have been uploaded by the contractor on e-application or not before passing the contractors' bills, it said, adding that provision is available in the e-application to generate ID of the contract worker and also to send SMSs time to time about wages paid to him, contribution made to The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) and ‘Employees' State Insurance Corporation’ (ESIC).