Latest News | Women in Higher Decision-making Positions Needed: Bhupender Yadav

New Delhi, Jan 12 (PTI) Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav has stressed on the need for women in higher positions for decision making to boost their participation in the workforce.

“For promoting female labour force participation rate, not only there should be higher participation in women in the workforce but women should be seen at positions of decision-making,” a labour ministry statement quoted Yadav as saying in interaction with industry representatives.

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The ministry said that in a first of its kind, Yadav interacted with human resource heads of industry, representing various sectors, including manufacturing, staffing agency, automobile, construction, and hotel industry.

The interaction was facilitated by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

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Sunil Barthwal, Secretary, Ministry of Labour & Employment, initiated dialogue and invited comments from participants on improving service delivery in Employees Provident Fund Organization and Employees State Insurance Corporation, among other issues.

Chandrajeet Banerjee, Director General, CII moderated the interaction with HR Heads of various organisations and welcomed this initiative of the Ministry of Labour & Employment.

He informed that CII is fully aware of its responsibility of generating decent employment and appreciated steps taken by the government in addressing the situation of COVID, and continuous support to the manufacturing sector.

Representatives of various organisations appreciated the formulation of four labour codes and requested for early rollout.

Suggestions given by representatives of industry inter alia included the introduction of guaranteed employment in urban areas, reorienting education curriculum to align with the emerging technologies, and use of apprenticeship for employment generation.

Yadav assured them of full cooperation of the ministry.

The minister also said that to have a collaborative approach involving employers and employees in the last meetings of Central Board of Trustees of EPFO and Corporation of ESI, he has constituted Committees for improving grievance redressal of 6.5 crore members of EPFO, strengthening technological interventions, capacity building, effective monitoring of ongoing projects and enhancing coverage under social security.

Since ESIC caters to the medical needs of workers, the minister informed that it has also been decided to set up centres for the study of occupational diseases, in the hospitals at Alwar and Bihta (Patna). The scheme of free medical check-ups for the insured persons in ESIC above the age of 40 years has been revamped and launched on a pilot basis in five hospitals.

He further mentioned that to monitor the ongoing construction of hospital projects, a dashboard in ESIC has also been developed.

Yadav mentioned that evidence-based policymaking and last-mile deliveries are the pillars of good governance and effective and targeted delivery of services.

For this purpose, this ministry has launched new surveys for migrant and domestic workers.

Further, to create a comprehensive database in informal and formal sectors, besides an All India Quarterly Establishments, based Employment Survey (AIQEES) for the organised sector, an area-based area-frame establishment survey has also been decided for establishments having 9 or fewer workers.

Results of the two quarterly establishment based employment surveys have been released.

The report of the second QES for the period, July to September 2021, highlighted that the estimated total employment in 9 selected sectors is 3.10 crore, which is higher by 2 lakh permanent jobs than in April to June 2021.

The overall percentage of female workers has also registered an increase and stands at 32.1 per cent, which is higher than the first round of QES.

The minister also mentioned the success of the e-Shram portal that allows self-registration of workers and maps their occupations in about 400 categories.

At present, the capacity of the e-Shram portal stands at registration of 45 lakh unorganised sector workers per day, compared to 10 lakh per day when it was launched in August 2021.

Already more than 21 crore unorganised sector workers have been registered on the e-Shram portal.

All workers registering on the e-shram portal gets free insurance of Rs 2 lakh under Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana and each worker gets a downloadable identity card, for which expenditure is borne by the central government.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)