Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, said the government’s priority was to ensure access to health and social security benefits to three labour groups—organised, unorganised and those not employed or below the poverty line.
Addressing labour unions and farmers’ associations in two separate meetings on Monday, Mr. Jaitley said, “To make health and social security >benefits accessible to unorganised sector workers like construction workers, migrant labourers, volunteers of different schemes like Anganwadi workers etc is one of the major priorities of the present government. “Mechanisms can be thought of wherein social security benefit contributions to workers can be made by employers at a single window for all workers,” the Minister said. “The minimum wage should not be less than Rs.18,000 per month. >Need-based minimum wage is to be considered as essential part of social security,” the central trade unions had said in their recommendations.
“The income tax ceiling for the salaried persons and pensioners should be raised to Rs.five lakh per annum and fringe benefits like housing, medical and educational facilities and running allowances in Railways should be exempted from the income tax net in totality,” the unions added. The unions also recommended that contract or casual workers should not be deployed in jobs of a perennial nature. These workers should be paid the same wages and benefits as was being paid to regular workers doing the same work until they are regularised. In addition, the trade unions called for a control on spiralling prices and putting an end to government’s divestment in public sector companies.
Mr. Jaitley, addressing farmers, offered some solutions for the poor performance of the agricultural sector over the last few years.
“The key challenges faced by Indian agriculture are the need to > increase productivity by leveraging technology , especially for high yielding and pest-resistant seeds and efficient utilisation of water, adopting the latest in IT to increase resilience to nature by phasing sowing, watering and harvesting and to increase the price benefits to the farmer by providing timely market information,” Mr Jaitley said.
