Welfare Schemes hardly reach beneficiaries
Source: Hueiyen News Service

Imphal, December 10 2011: All types of benefits including accident benefits, pension loan, maternity and educational benefits given to building and other construction workers under the Manipur Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Scheme seldom reaches the actual beneficiaries due to the lack of awareness.

The Manipur Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Scheme was set up by the state government to improve the working conditions and living standard of the workers and came into effect on April 6 this year under the Manipur Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1996 .

Under this scheme, a construction worker will be given an amount of Rs 3,000 if he meets with an accident and in case of death as a result of an accident, Rs 50,000 will be given to the next of kin.

A monthly pension of Rs 500 will be given to those workers who have attained the age of 60 years.

Housing loan of Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh, yearly educational assistance of Rs 2,000 to their children studying in higher secondary level and Rs 4,000 in graduate level will also be provided while Rs 15,000 to students pursuing Engineering or Medical degree will also provided under this scheme.

A female worker will also be given an amount of Rs 3000 during child birth.

All these benefits seldom reaches the beneficiaries as the Rural Labour Inspector at various blocks of the state does not carry out awareness programmes regarding the benefits of these schemes.

Inspite of a huge amount of funds amounting to Rs 4.50 lakhs being reserved by the Labour Department in its budget exclusively for spreading awareness to the public, no awareness campaign is carried out.

The Labour Inspectors of Thoubal CD Block, Imphal East and West CD Block, Bishnupur CD Block, Ukhrul TD Block, CCpur TD Block, Tamenglong TD Block, Chandel TD Block and Senapati TD Block have been assigned to carry out the registration process of the workers to the scheme.

Apart from the Labour Inspector of the Labour Department in Lamphelpat, all other Labour Inspectors at various blocks have not made any attempt to implement the scheme.

According to an official source there are 32 Labour Inspectors in the Labour Department at present.

A labourer in the hill district has to face trouble to come to the plain districts and register themselves in the scheme.

To cope up with this problem, the state government has issued an order to open district Labour Department office in all the districts of the state.

Uptill now there are 2627 labourers registered under the scheme.

Among them 769 have applied for benefits under the scheme and from amongst them the children of 179 labourers have been given financial assistance for pursuing further studies.

One labourer has been given medical assistance.

Another 589 labourers are also in the process of getting benefits under the scheme, said the source.

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