A two-day national conference on “labour Migration: Issues and Challenges” held in New Delhi recently adopted several resolutions and recommendations urging the Government to check and regulate migration of labourers from States to States and from the country abroad for safety, security and welfare of the huge workforce.
The conference demanded that the long-pending Emigration Management Bill 2011 be passed by the Parliament at the earliest. “This will bring all agents as well as emigrants on record,” it said.
Viewing the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 as toothless, the conference demanded that the Government consider reviewing and overhauling in line with changing time.
“All the workers going abroad should be put on record and the formality of HCR/NCNR in the Passports should be done away with. Similarly, the much publicized Pravasi Bharatiya Divas should take up the issue of labour migration seriously. The Union Government should take up labour migration issues with neighbouring SAARC countries and middle-east countries where most migration lakes place,” it deanded.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh said the migrant labourers lose his or her basic PDS facilities in the migrated State. The basic facilities like PDS, health and shelter benefits should be provided to migrant workers, he demanded.
“If the full potential of our migrant labour force can be utilised, it can contribute one or two per cent to the total GDP of the country,” he said.
Supplementing Singh, Indian National Building Construction Forest and Wood Workers Federation (INBCWF) president and former Rajya Sabha member Dr Ramachandra Khuntia said the day the unorganised labouers become organised, the whole country would take care of them.
Several MPs, who are also national level labour union leaders, participated in the event organised by the INBCWF. They include Tapan Sen (CPM), Prasnna Patsani (BJD), Bhubaneswar Kalita (Cong), Goverdhan Reddy (BJP) and labour leaders Farun Vijay, Anand Bhaskar, Pradip Bhattacharya and Shantaram Naik.
The speakers were unanimous that there should be a dedicated labour cell in all the High Commissions and Embassies of India abroad lo take care of the urgent need of the struggling labour forces.
‘It is difficult even to bring back the body of an expatiate labour if he or she loses life on a foreign soil,” they lamented.
Most of the speakers also criticised the Government for merging the Indian Overseas Affairs Ministry with the Ministry of External Affairs. “This has diluted the issue of oversee labourers to a great extent. But the trade unions will not allow amendments in the existing labour laws being attempted by the present Government, they said.