BJP Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan Bhupender Yadav on Thursday took charge as Minister for Labour and Employment and asked the Ministry officials to come up with new ideas for schemes to benefit workers, a Ministry statement said.
Minister of State for Labour and Employment Rameswar Teli also assumed office a day after being inducted into the Cabinet.
“The Minister met the senior officers of the Ministry, and took stock of the ongoing, pending and burning issues in the Ministry. The Minister directed the senior officers that any new ideas which come to their mind should be openly shared and discussed with him so that suitable policies and schemes can be devised and implemented for the crores of workers, both organised and unorganised, in the country,” the statement said.
Mr. Yadav, an advocate by profession, replaced eight-term Lok Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh Santosh Kumar Gangwar, who resigned on Wednesday. The changes at the top of the Labour Ministry come at a time the Centre is in the process of implementing labour law reforms.
Having subsumed 29 laws into four labour codes that were passed by Parliament in 2019 and 2020, the Ministry is yet to notify the implementation of the codes that cover wages, social security, industrial relations and occupational safety, health and working conditions. The codes were expected to be implemented by April 1 this year, however, the rules required for fully implementing them have not been notified yet.