Karnataka: Cash transfers for labourers planned

B V Shiva Shankar | TNN | Apr 21, 2020, 10:24 IST

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BENGALURU: Nudged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help labourers from unorganised sectors hit by the lockdown, the Karnataka government is looking to emulate Haryana’s model where the state has rolled out direct cash transfer (DBT) scheme for daily-wage workers. The Haryana government has been transferring Rs 1,000 directly to bank accounts of beneficiaries every week.
“We want to reach out to daily-wage workers and labourers, but dearth of funds is a problem,’’ said labour minister A Shivaram Hebbar. Also, the government doesn’t have complete data of labourers other than estimates of 80 lakh daily earners, including agriculture workers, domestic helps, auto and taxi drivers.
Hebbar said the government will seek monetary support from the Centre. Soon after the lockdown was announced, the Haryana government set up a portal for workers from unorganised sectors. Within no time, five lakh people registered and the government now transfers cash into their accounts. The Delhi government followed suit, paying Rs 5,000 per family.
“We could have adopted the practice, but unlike Haryana and Delhi, we have a huge population of labourers and cannot afford to do so without adequate preparation,’’ Hebbar said. In Karnataka, only construction labourers get such a benefit; they are paid Rs 2,000 each from the Construction Workers’ Welfare Fund that has a corpus of Rs 8,500 crore. But only 1.25 lakh workers are covered, officials said.