Since its launch on August 26, the government’s e-Shram portal registered 21 lakh unorganised sector workers as of Tuesday, according to data on the Labour and Employment Ministry’s portal.
Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav told The Hindu that the progress had been satisfactory and the Ministry would boost the capacities of the portal. Mr. Yadav said he, along with the Minister of State, would visit the 20 deputy chief labour commissioner offices in the country to interact with the stakeholders and seek feedbacks about the portal in the next four months. All Central trade unions had supported the launch of the portal, he noted.
An official of the Ministry said 21.02 lakh workers had been registered as of Tuesday. According to the Ministry’s statement at the time of the launch, the portal would lead to the creation of a national database of unorganised workers. Apart from being Aadhaar-linked, it collected details of the name, occupation, address, educational qualification, skill types and family of the registered workers.
The portal is open to workers engaged in the unorganised sector and aged between 16 and 59.
Once collected, the details of the gig and platform workers, street vendors, domestic workers and other unorganised sector workers would be used for social security schemes for them, the Ministry stated.
Chandan Kumar of the Working Peoples Charter, a network of organisations working with unorganised workers, said the organisations helping the workers register on the portal had a mixed response. The process was going good, but some people experienced technical issues, which need to be rectified by the NIC, he added.
