In an important announcement amid coronavirus lockdown, the Union labour ministry has on Tuesday asked states and Union Territories to transfer funds in the account of construction workers through DBT (direct benefit transfer) mode from the cess fund collected by the Labour Welfare Boards. The advisory was issued by Santosh Kumar Gangwar, MoS Ministry of Labour and Employment, ahead of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s preserves on Tuesday.
About Rs 52,000 crores is available as cess fund and about 3.5 crore construction workers are registered with these construction welfare boards.
Further economic relief measures is expected to be announced by the FM and later by Prime Minister Narendra Modi later in the day.
Earlier, the Uttar Pradesh government had announced that the state government would provide a monthly allowance of Rs 1,000 each to around 15 lakh daily wage labourers and 20.37 lakh construction workers in the state to help them meet their daily needs in view of the coronavirus outbreak.
