Several members in Rajya Sabha today expressed concern over lack of social security benefits for workers in the unorganised sector, with Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya saying much more needs to be done for them.
Not much has been done for workers in the unorganised sector in the last sixty years as was required, and the NDA government is now paying attention to this aspect, the Minister said during Question Hour.
He said the government has initiated several measures and schemes and efforts were being made to register unorganised workers and issue nationally portable smart cards for such workers for facilitating convergence and better delivery of services.
Earlier several opposition members expressed dissatisfaction with the minister's reply, with Jairam Ramesh (Congress) seeking the Chair's protection in this regard.
Even BJP's Tarun Vijay also appeared unsatisfied with the minister's response to a question whether there was coordination between six identified ministries to run the social sector programmes and whether unorganised workers were expected to run from one ministry to another.
The minister's reply is not relevant to what has been asked, Jairam Ramesh said.
T N Seema (CPI-M) had sought to know whether the implementation of unorganised workers social security Act had failed to provide employment security and protection.
In his reply, Dattatreya spoke about the different schemes and said the ministry was launching a nationwide campaign for registration of unorganised workers with the help of smart cards, which would be linked with AADHAR and with bank account and mobile numbers.
Schemes like Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana and Aam Aadmi Bima Yojana and Old Age Pension will be converged into smart card, he said.
Opposition members then said the minister had not answered Vijay's question, which prompted the BJP MP to rise and say he was quite satisfied with the reply.
JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav said that contract labour was being employed in Parliament toilets also and asked the minister to find out what their salaries were.
"You are running Swacch Bharat campaign, you should see what their situation is," Yadav said.
