Approximately 32 lakh workers of the unorganised sector have been registered on the e-Shram portal, but a more focused approach with respect to enumeration and specifically registration of migrant workers within the State is required, officials said.
Officials said that the e-Shram is a self-registration portal for unorganised sector workers. Broadly speaking, it is for those who cannot avail Provident Fund for employees and Employees State Insurance Corporation benefits. It covers approximately 157 categories of unorganised sector workers including domestic workers, street vendors and migrants.
Sources said that during the pandemic, an exercise that was conducted to track the number of migrants in the State revealed the presence of over 4 lakh such workers. With many of them having left for their home states, the real number was estimated to be around 8 lakh.
While the e-Shram portal covers migrants, officials said that a more robust mechanism is required to track them so welfare schemes are easily accessible. But this comes with a set of genuine concerns. “Any Indian citizen is free to move anywhere in the country to seek employment. So continuous tracking too becomes problematic. This is why there must be coordination between states,” an official who did not wish to be identified said. He suggested that Aadhaar-linked tracking could be explored.
While the e-Shram portal is a welcome initiative, there are some limitations. “The Telangana government has taken up several initiatives to spread awareness about e-Shram portal. Lots of awareness programmes were taken up and 32 lakh were registered. But there are some issues we have been facing. For example, a migrant from Bihar shows as an unorganised sector worker in his State. But he is a migrant worker of Telangana. This is why we are having issues in filtering out data,” a Labour Department official said.
While the Labour Department’s website states that there are 58,222 migrants working in over 13 sectors, the data does not reflect the actual numbers. According to those in the know, the exercise of migrant worker enumeration came to a halt as the focus moved toward centralisation of data and the e-Shram portal.
While the State had announced a migrant workers policy, officials and those working for migrants workers rights said that it has not been finalised yet. “There is a need to quickly develop and finalise the policy. The State’s role in migrants welfare is important. The focus should be on registration and issuing insurance policies them,” they said.
