Delhi government's labor registration camp falls flat owing to technical difficulties

NEW DELHI: The Delhi government’s campaign for registering daily wage labourers, including construction workers, saw an underwhelming number of registrations owing to technical difficulties during the process. Around 20,000 daily wage labourers visited the registration camps set up by the government earlier this month.

According to officials, during the 15-day Nirman Mazdoor Registration Abhiyan aimed at speeding up the registration process, the number of new registrations remained low. In total, around 17,000 people were able to register for the first time, renew old registrations and upload documents. 

Delhi Labour Minister Gopal Rai on August 24 had launched the campaign across all the 70 assembly constituencies. Camps were set up in schools with officers from Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board. Lawyers were recruited on a temporary basis for the camps. 

However, soon after its launch, massive technical problems with the e-district website for registration, renewal, uploading of documents of applicants were reported. The campaign ended on September 11 but the government is yet to officially release the data on the numbers of registrations done through this exercise. 

Workers had flocked to these camps in the initial days hoping to avail benefits of the 18 different assistance schemes put in place by the government. However, they stopped going after witnessing massive problems in the process.

“Almost 80 per cent of the workers who visited these camps were unsuccessful because of the mismanagement by the government. Many had to spend the whole day at these camps and return disappointed and empty-handed,” said Sunil Kumar Aledia, who has filed a petition in the Delhi High Court over the welfare of construction workers.
However, the government believes it has done a good job in the registration of workers. “The campaign got a good response and almost 17,000 workers either registered or renewed and uploaded their documents during the 15-day mega campaign.

The registration of new workers was lower and around 20,000 people visited the camps,” said Harish Bajaj, deputy secretary in the labour department. When asked about the poor response to the campaign, the  office of Gopal Rai said, “We have made progress and learned new things through this campaign but initially there were some problems in the camps.

We are dedicated to  increase registration of construction workers and provide them welfare.” The government had provided financial assistance of Rs 5000 to all registered construction workers for two months during the Covid-19 lockdown. In 2018, there were about 5 lakh registered construction workers. Before the launch of the campaign on August 24, the Delhi government had registered nearly 70,000 construction labourers this year, Rai had said at that time.

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