AHMEDABAD: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), in its report on the Welfare of Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW), has highlighted a deep-rooted governance crisis in Gujarat’s construction workers’ welfare system.
Despite collecting nearly Rs 4,787.60 crore in cess from construction projects since 2006, the state has failed to create a transparent and accountable mechanism to safeguard the rights and welfare of its vast construction workforce.
Critical boards remain defunct, thousands of posts are vacant, and nearly 47% of the funds remain locked in government accounts, even as workers continue without proper safety, health, or social security measures.
The report, for the period ending March 2022, was tabled in the Gujarat Assembly on Wednesday.
The BOCW Act, 1996, was designed to protect construction workers, among the most vulnerable sections of India’s workforce, through a three-tier structure consisting of a welfare board, an advisory committee, and a dedicated welfare fund. However, the audit findings point to systemic neglect and institutional decline in Gujarat.
The State BOCW Welfare Board, first set up in December 2004, was meant to ensure equal representation of government, employers, and workers. But since November 2017, it has functioned as a single-member board headed only by the Principal Secretary of the Labour Department. For five years, decisions impacting lakhs of workers were taken without any representation from workers or employers, in violation of the spirit of the Act.
The governance deficit deepened further with the State Advisory Committee (SAC), mandated under Section 4(1) of the Act to guide policy, remaining unconstituted since 2011. Without the SAC, key decisions on safety, welfare schemes, and fund usage lacked expert oversight.
The welfare fund, which was intended to serve as the system’s financial backbone, was never formally created. Instead, cess collections were diverted into a government account, forcing the Board to rely on irregular grants.
Between 2006-07 and 2022-23, Rs 4,787.60 crore was collected, but only Rs 2,544.81 crore (53%) was released to the Board. The remaining Rs 2,242.79 crore (47%) was retained by the government as of March 2023, depriving workers of crucial welfare benefits.
The Board also suffers from severe staff shortages—72% of regular posts and 42% of inspector-level posts were vacant as of March 2022. District offices lacked inspectors to register workers or process welfare applications.
Even as registered establishments increased sharply from 668 in 2017 to 4,087 in 2022, no system was created to link government construction projects with worker registration, enabling many establishments to evade registration altogether.
The registration process itself was poorly managed. No time limits were prescribed for processing applications, causing long delays. Audit checks even found non-construction workers registered as beneficiaries, reflecting weak verification systems.
Awareness efforts, critical for worker enrollment, were largely neglected. Of the Rs 20 crore earmarked for awareness campaigns between 2017 and 2022, only Rs 2.82 crore (14%) was spent. Simple and low-cost measures such as SMS alerts, short smartphone videos, and grassroots outreach through local bodies—mandated by the Centre—were never implemented.
Field inspections further revealed widespread violations of safety norms. At 50 sites surveyed, 66% lacked overhead protection, 60% had no eye protection, and 64% were without fire extinguishing equipment. Many sites were unprepared for medical emergencies, and 38% failed to provide temporary accommodation for workers.
The CAG report concludes that while Gujarat’s construction boom has added thousands of crores to government coffers, the very workers responsible for building the state’s infrastructure remain unregistered, unprotected, and excluded from the benefits meant for them.