SOLAN: Reacting to the Chief Minister statement over enacting a new law to check the contract labour the AITUC has reiterated that with the notification under section 10 of the Contract Labour Regulation and Abolition Act, 1970 the contract labour could be curbed. Therefore, there was no need to make any new law, AITUC asserted. It was in fact state government dilly-dally approach to issue notification under Act that has led to hire of contract labourer in big way by the employers, maintained Mr. Jagdish Bhardwaj the state chief of AITUC while talking to myHimachal here today.
The section prohibits employment of contract labour in manufacturing units and permanent nature of work, he asserted. It’s good that government has at least woken up to menace but the need of the hour to do some practical rather than to make claims, he pointed out.
Disagreeing with government claim over 70 percent employment to Himachalis in units, Mr. Bhardwaj said that the figures were distorted to give wrong impression. In reality the Himachalis have only managed to get 25-30 percent employment. Ironically the most of these 25-30 percentage manpower were through contract.
“With the Labour Department has so far proved to be a mute spectator to check the ever growing menace, entrepreneurs were deriving maximum benefit from department’s check the approach of employers by hiring manpower on their own terms and conditions.â€
Mr. Bhardwaj said that the modus operandi by employers to hire contract labourer is that first they connivance with private contractor to get licence to hire workers for loading-unloading and house keeping work but later the labour hired for this work is used on machines and other directly related work.
Interestingly the labour department has to issue licence due to political pressure, said Mr. Bhardwaj.
