Mega meeting on Friday to plan central database for jobs, workforce

Within days of the Union Budget announcing several proposals related to employment, internship and skilling, the government is initiating a process to comprehensively tap relevant information on jobs and workforce. In a first such step, some 20 Union ministries will brainstorm, on Friday, with the objective of creating a central database on employment.
 

In an interview, labour secretary Sumita Dawra told Business Standard that the exercise would be a starting point in formalising a way to capture data that will link supply and demand for workforce in the country. “We should have an institutional mechanism to capture and report the employment data with the central ministries,’’ Dawra said, adding ministries will be encouraged to self-report the employment related data on the PRAYAS portal.
 

The meeting will be chaired by labour minister Mansukh Lal Mandaviya and will see participation of officials from ministries, such as external affairs, commerce and industry, agriculture, coal, corporate affairs, finance, skill development, and textiles. The Union Budget earlier this week announced a Rs 2-trillion jobs and skilling package that includes three employment-linked incentive (ELI) schemes.

According to the labour ministry, policy reforms across sectors and government programmes have generated employment. However, these government programmes have not been exploited to estimate employment generation.

Dawra pointed out that the planned exercise will not substitute the sampling-based methodology used by the National Statistical Office (NSO), which is currently used to calculate employment generation in the country. “This will be a supplementary exercise…. NSO surveys and RBI’s KLEMS database will continue as usual,” she added.

FINALISING ELIs

The labour ministry is also close to finalising the draft of the ELI schemes. “We will be ready with the draft of the three ELI schemes by the end of this month,” Dawra said.

Once the draft is finalised, the three schemes will be reviewed by the finance ministry. There will also be an inter-ministerial consultation, after which the Cabinet will have to approve the schemes.

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), which will be the implementing agency for the three schemes, will build on its prior experience of implementing the Atmanirbhar Bharat Rojgar Yojana (ABRY). This will lead to a sharp increase in the number of active subscribers that the social security organisation currently manages.

“We are in the process of reforming the EPFO ‘backend systems’ and building its capacity for the future,’’ Dawra said. Although the direct benefit transfer (DBT) part of the schemes is something new for the EPFO, it won't come in the way of scheme implementation, according to her.

Under the proposed ELI scheme for first timers, the government will provide direct benefit transfer of one-month salary (up to Rs 15,000) in three instalments to first-time employees registered with the EPFO.

E-SHRAM

The labour ministry is in the process to onboard 200 million more unorganised sector workers on to the e- shram portal, in addition to the nearly 300 million workers that are currently enrolled.

“We are working with several ministries such as finance, health, housing, skill development, road transport, rural development and trying to integrate their databases with the e-shram portal. The idea is that the beneficiaries who have not yet registered on to this portal, but are covered under the numerous schemes administered by these ministries should be able to come on board and get registered in the database,” Dawra said.

According to estimates, the total workforce in the country stands at around 650 million, with close to 100 million in the organised sector. “The database is expected to saturate somewhere around 500 million people, due to formalisation of the workforce undertaken by these new schemes,” Dawra said.

The Budget proposed to facilitate a wide array of services to labour, including those for employment and skilling, with a comprehensive integration of e-shram portal with other portals with the goal of a one-stop solution.