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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NAC push for worker rights by Radhika Ramaseshan

NAC push for worker rights by Radhika Ramaseshan

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published Published on Apr 11, 2012   modified Modified on Apr 11, 2012

The Sonia-Gandhi led National Advisory Council is pushing to amend the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 to make it more inclusive and include a comprehensive social security package.

The council, which met last month, pitched for a security package that would contain health insurance, maternity assistance, a life-cum-disability insurance scheme and a pension plan that it proposed should be provided through a single window backed by an inter-ministerial committee consisting of representatives from the finance, women and child development, health and family welfare, and labour and employment ministries.

The working group on social security, led by members Mirai Chatterjee, the social security director of Self-Employed Women’s Association, Ahmedabad, and development economist A.K. Shiva Kumar, recommended covering all unorganised workers, including contract labourers, within the ambit of the law.

They stressed that priority while enrolling workers should be given to women-headed families, specially-abled workers, landless agricultural workers, tobacco leaf pluckers and collectors of minor forest produce, rag pickers, rural artisans and weavers, shepherds and MNREGA workers.

Outlining the social security package, the NAC suggested that all women in the unorganised sector should get maternity entitlements under the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (now being piloted in 52 districts) with certain modifications.

Under the existing provisions, women are paid three instalments of Rs 4,000 each till the child is six years of age; the NAC recommended six tranches of Rs 6,000 each till the child is three months.

It proposed bringing all unorganised workers under the National Health Insurance Scheme that could be merged into a national health entitlement plan (guaranteeing access to in-patient and out-patient care).

The council also came up with draft recommendations of a national programme for shelters and other services for the urban homeless, estimated to be at least one per cent of the population in cities (around three million).

A note prepared by members Harsh Mander and N.C. Saxena, both former bureaucrats, contextualised the proposals in the following terms: “Life on the streets involves surviving continuously at the edge, in a physically brutalised and challenging environment, with denial of elementary public services and assured healthy food, illegalisation and even criminalisation.”

Mander and Saxena stressed that the shelters for homeless should be open 24/7 in all seasons and should have basic amenities such as beds, toilets, potable water, lockers, first aid, primary health, de-addiction and recreation facilities.

Conceding that a majority of the urban homeless were working men and should, therefore, be catered to in men’s shelters, Mander and Saxena said provisions should be made for shelterless single women and their children, the old, the infirm and the differently abled. If a child lacked an adult carer, they asked for separate protected spaces for such children.

The NAC also emphasised giving priority to the homeless for education and health insurance entitlements.

The Telegraph, 11 April, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120411/jsp/nation/story_15360210.jsp#.T4VGn5mO0fU


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