The District Construction Workers Coordination Committee has accused the Ministry of Labour of trying to misuse welfare funds meant for construction workers by preparing new unwanted schemes in the name of helping workers.
Addressing presspersons here on Saturday, Mahadev Devar, one of the functionaries, mentioned that some of the new schemes proposed by the government will have a spending of nearly ₹ 5,600 crore collected as cess from construction companies for the welfare of workers.
“The Ministry plans to provide smartphones to over 11 lakh registered construction workers by spending around ₹ 400 crore. It also proposes to spend ₹ 21 crore for providing air ambulance facility to workers in case of an accident during work. We believe that these two examples are enough to prove that the Ministry is making efforts to misuse the funds,” he said.
Mr. Devar said that the construction workers do not need smartphone which is of no use to them, particularly when a majority of them are either illiterate or poorly educated. The scheme is illogical, he said.
Questioning the logic behind spending money for air ambulance, he said that how will that even be useful to workers.
“The government is already offering ‘108’ ambulance services which is working across the State. How will the air ambulance be helpful to us. If a construction worker meets with an accident in a small town, how will the air ambulance come to his rescue,” he asked.
He said that it was a conspiracy hatched by the government to misuse the funds. He said that these decisions were taken unilaterally without discussing or taking the opinion of associations working for the construction workers.
He said that Amlan Aditya Biswas, secretary of the Labour Department, and Minister Santosh Lad were involved in taking the decisions. “We not only demand the immediate roll-back of these proposed schemes but also want Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to sack the Minister and the official from their posts,” Mr. Devar said.
He demanded that the government appoint more staff for disposing of hundreds of pending applications. Giving an example in Vijayapura, he said that while over 5,000 applications were pending, only two officials were working to dispose of these applications.