Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday asked Labour Department officials to make arrangements of houses and hostels for labourers living in the national capital. Free bus travel, group life insurance, free coaching for their children and transit hostels — these are some of the facilities the Delhi government will extend to the 13 lakh registered construction workers in the city. He directed the board officials to meet Delhi Transport Corporation officials and group life insurance companies to chart out the costs of implementing the schemes at the earliest.
Kejriwal expressed his concerns regarding the lack of benefits reaching all workers and instructed the department to formulate an action plan to extend the benefit of all welfare schemes to each and every registered construction worker.
The government has announced that toolkits and skill training for masons, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and painters will be provided on a large scale. Kejriwal also announced free coaching for children of construction workers, and the development of crèche facilities on sites.
Earlier, the CM had told the board officials to formulate an action plan to utilise at least 25 percent of its funds on workers’ welfare this year. The CM also expressed his displeasure with the board’s inability to reach out to every construction worker saying that even though 13 lakh workers are registered with the board, it has not developed any mechanism to verify their existence and reach out to them.
“If the department is extending the benefit of these schemes to only 400-500 people in the name of scheme, then there is no point in running the department itself. The costs of the department would be higher than that of the welfare schemes,” he said.
He also directed officials to conduct a proper exercise along with Revenue Department teams to verify the registered workers by June this year. The chief minister also directed them to find out and submit the number of registered workers aged above 60 within one week, so the benefit of pension can be extended to them.
“Start reaching out to all registered workers on their phones. The cost of sending SMS and IVRS messages to all the workers on their phones would be much lesser than running TV and radio campaigns and it will be much more effective,” he said. The government will also allocate LIG flats to construction workers, by bearing 75 per cent of the cost, while the beneficiary will only be liable to pay the remaining 25 per cent.
