The labour fraternity would benefit by the Centre's December notification to ensure salaries are credited regulary to workers through cheques or in their bank accounts, Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said today.
"Most of the trade unions demand that workers get wages regularly. Now the government has specified that in the notification under Payment of Wages Act, 1936 (on December 28) so that wages are paid to employees through cheques or through bank accounts," he said here after chairing the State Labour Ministers and Principle Secretaries Conference here.
Asserting that his ministry is committed to protecting the labourers, the Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment (independent charge) said, "A Bill in this regard will be taken up in the coming Parliament session."
Dattatreya said a national minimum wage bill will brought for more effective implementation of labour welfare measures and the ministry is discussing about it with "all stakeholders".
"This bill will largely benefit workers whenever their wages are not paid regularly. It will also eliminate middlemen," he said.
On demonetisation, the minister said there were some media reports of a slowdown in employment growth in the last two months due to it.
"But so far, there is no impact assessment on a short period of two months (November and December)," he said, adding his ministry had requested the Union Finance Ministry to send mobile ATMs to places where there was currency shortage.
"I made a request about 20 days back and immediately ample notes for about Rs 2,000 crore was sent by RBI to my home state Telangana", Dattatreya said.
On covering employees under the Employees State Insurance Corporation post demonetisation, he said 1.96 lakh employees and 1,425 commercial establishments got registered so far since December 20 last year.
"We are targeting to cover one crore new employees before March 31," Dattatreya said.
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