The Delhi High Court has directed the Secretary-cum-Labour Commissioner of the AAP government to personally look into regulating the functioning of private placement agencies and ensuring compliance of a previous direction to register them so as to check human trafficking.
Justice A K Chawla directed the Delhi government to comply with the September 30, 2014 order of the division bench within eight weeks and then submit the action taken report signed by an officer not below the rank of additional labour commissioner.
The affidavit on ATR is to be filed within 10 weeks, failing which the incumbent additional commissioner has to remain present before the court on the next date, January 9, 2020, the court said in its Tuesday order, made available on Wednesday.
The court was hearing the contempt petition by NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) alleging that there was a "complete wilful disobedience and non-compliance" of the court's September 30, 2014 order for regulating the functioning of placement agencies.
The court said, "Can the concerned Wing(s) of a welfare state be oblivious to the given cause and be sensitive enough to fail in its duty to achieve the objectives which were taken note of by the court and the directions in that regard came to be issued? Certainly, not."
The single judge, in its order said, "Taking note of the totality of facts and circumstances, in the first instance, it is expected of Vivek Pandey, Secretary-cum-Labour Commissioner, to look into the entire matter personally and ensure that the extant executive order is given effect to in its letter and spirit, as was directed by the division bench of the court on September 30, 2014...."
According to the information contained in the executive order, there were 1,008 identified placement agencies. Besides, it admitted to inspecting only 344 of these establishments and that only 41 were found to be functional. Additionally the executive order claimed that 303 agencies had shifted to locations whose addresses were not known and that notices were served on only 41 agencies for producing statutory records (as of September 2014)
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