The State government has taken around ₹600 crore from the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) welfare fund as part of efforts to provide relief to workers registered with the Labour Dept. who are finding it difficult to find jobs due to the prevalence of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The BOCW Board had earlier given ₹336 crore to the government as its contribution for providing relief to over 14 lakh workers registered with it. The amount has been used to provide 12-kg. rice and ₹1,500 cash to registered workers with white ration cards as part of the relief package announced by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
Senior officials said while the Board reimbursed the expenditure of ₹336 crore incurred by the government on workers towards the end of March and early April, close to ₹600 crore had been channelled through the Finance Department to the Civil Supplies Department for meeting the expenditure for May and June.
“It was reimbursement earlier. This time the government took the amount as advance to meet the expenditure incurred towards workers welfare,” a senior Labour Department official said adding the total contribution of the department was around ₹900 crore for the relief works.
The BOCW Welfare Board, according to officials, was faced with a piquant situation as far as the distribution of relief to the workers is concerned. The government had decided to extend relief with family as a unit. Ration cards are issued for families and workers are registered individually.
Anyone above 18 years is eligible to register with the Board and the number of workers can be more than the ration cards in existence.
“But no calculation has been done in this direction,” the official told The Hindu. The department had therefore taken up mapping of the workers and their status as of now so that there would be clarity on the issue.
