LAHORE: The Punjab government has decided to automate the Punjab Labour and Human Resource Department (PL&HRD) to increase registration of labourers in the government’s database for providing social security grants to them in time.
Speaking to Pakistan Today, the Punjab Minister Labour and Human Resource Ansar Majeed Khan Niazi said, “The entire department system will be automated with the help of information technology and all labourers will be registered in this system.”
“Our labourers have to wait for months to get social security funds such as marriage, scholarship and health funds, but after automation, all such grants will be issued to them within hours. Similarly, in this system we will also put the data of the employees of the PL&HRD through which the transfer posting and promotions will be done in a transparent manner,” he added.
“The lack of a centralised database is a major problem. Unfortunately, no survey for registering labourers had been conducted since 2014. We have now started the survey in the entire province. Currently, we have the data of 1.2 million labourers, mainly comprising those who are working in different industries, and this is insufficient because according to the International Labor Organisation (ILO), our department should have three million labouers registered. When our government assumed charge, the figure was one million but we managed to add another two million. My target is to register another two million labourers by 2022 and we will definitely achieve this target,” he added.
Niazi said that they have almost seven to eight million registered labourers from formal and informal sectors. “The problem with the formal sector is that many workers work on contracts that are not even registered by industry owners, but now we are bringing in a law that would make it mandatory for registering every contractual employee for social security. Moreover, we have almost four million labourers registered in informal sectors and this number will increase,” he said.
He added that it was an uphill task to collect data about the informal sector. “We have taken the chambers, associations and unions onboard to collect the data about informal sectors. We are even in touch with the focal persons of those labourers who work on daily wages. We are also giving this data to the Ehsaas Programme and the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) is also providing us the data from informal sector. We are also planning to provide social protection to this sector and if we need to change the law for this, we will do that,” he further said.
When asked about the alliance of labour inspector and industry owner for the registration of labourers, the minister said that the labour inspector is a threat to the industry. Many laborers may not be registered with the connivance of the labor inspector and the industry owner, but our job is not to register the labourers because this is the responsibility of the industry owner, whereas the job of a labor inspector is only to verify that the data industry is providing the data, he added.
“In this regard, we are working on inspection regime. We want to build trust with the industry so that they can register all their labor data directly and we will assure them that our labour inspector will not come to them. For all this, we are bringing a surprise checking mechanism and this checking will be done through computer balloting. An industry that is checked once will not be checked again for two years. Our job is to stop the exploitation of labourers. We want to develop trust with the industry that the money they give us in the name of workers’ social security is being used properly,” he further said.
Speaking about the healthcare facilities for labourers, Niazi said, “We are going to build new hospitals in Sargodha, Rahim Yar Khan and DG Khan for the social security of labours. Similarly, we are upgrading all the emergency centers in Punjab to medical centers.”
When asked about the registered units/industries in Punjab, he said, “So far, we have only 22,000 units registered in the entire province, which is very low. We are bringing amnesty schemes for industries through which those industries which have not yet registered their workers will be able to do so. The coronavirus outbreak has changed the way the world thinks. Many people are working from home and for all this we are bringing Home Base Workers Bill as well.”
