HYDERABAD: The Telangana government is hurrying to make the changes recommended by the Centre in its Business Reform Action Plan-2019 report for the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB), and has also tweaked a few modalities in two key labour laws.
One of the major changes is that the Labour Department has granted exemptions under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act and The Contract Labour Act, 1970 for renewing the licences of labour personnel automatically.
This means, contractors can renew labourers’ licences without filing an application, but by just paying a fee. “Earlier, contractors had to visit the department every year for taking certain permissions. Now, this can be done by paying a fee,” an official said.
This change is being taken up by the Industries and Labour departments, while many others are being planned across different wings of the government. A recent government order stated that “The Principal Secretary of the Industries and Commerce Department (Jayesh Ranjan), in his letter..., has informed that the Government of India has issued further guidelines as part of the Business Reform Action Plan-2019, for the implementation of the auto-renewal system for registration/licenses under certain Labour laws...”
The official said, “There are many other measures that have been recommended by the Centre, which the State government has to implement by November 30”.
These are aimed at making Telangana better in the EoDB and forms a part of the Business Reform Action Plan, a country-wide ranking that highlights the pro-business measures implemented by every State or Union Territory.
In the recent EoDB rankings published a few weeks ago, Telangana slipped a notch lower to the third position as it did not implement certain measures in the Law Department.