VIJAYAWADA: India Working Group Against Trafficking (IWG), an alliance of 22 civil society organisations combatting human trafficking on the ground and at a policy level, have made a joint submission to the Ministry of Labour and Employment urging for changes in some of the provisions in the Social Security Code Draft Rules, 2020.
The IWG urged the government to take responsibility for providing social security to the most marginalised, starting with those in high-risk categories. In its submission, it stated that the entitlement to social security should be based on equality of access; the social security schemes should avoid unnecessary threshold-based criteria still present in the Code.
The IWG also suggested that in the longer-term, social protection architecture should secure every person’s wellbeing. Crucially, it should be based on a non-contributory social protection scheme covering at least minimum income standards as calculated by the Ministry of Labour (National Minimum Wage Act).
For this, IWG advocated for an effective social security approach called Graduation Approach aimed at addressing the many challenges of poverty, protecting livelihoods, income and health among the marginalised through connecting registered workers with a range of government schemes.
Further clarity has been requested on these provisions mainly in relation to the workers who tend to miss out from such digital registration exercises.
“Millions of eligible beneficiaries are left out due to no Aadhaar, weak technological infrastructure, biometric identification failure and complicated online portal registration system,” it said. The IWG, in its submission, suggested that the registration process should be incentivised and done through a hotline-based mechanism.
The IWG has also demanded more clarity on the proposed constitution of the National Social Security Board for the unorganised sector workers.