State government has arranged special buses for women working in garment factories to attend to their work and return home safely.
These special buses will be flagged off by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah during the first week of January 2015 according to P.T. Parmeshwar Naik, Minister of State for Labour and district in-charge.
Speaking to presspersons here on Thursday, Mr. Naik said as per the instructions of the Chief Minister, Mr. Siddaramaiah, to provide safety to women workers, the Labour Department, in association with State Road Transport Department and the managements of garment factories had worked out a detailed plan in this regard.
To start with, this facility would be made available in Bengaluru and later extended it to other areas, where more number of garment factories have been located around Bengaluru
“There are around three lakh women working in shifts in many garment factories in Bengaluru alone. The women employees would be given a monthly bus pass and they can board the buses from some of the points at scheduled time that will be notified. The managements have been asked to bear the bus pass fare which would come to around Rs. 1,050 per month, while Transport Minister, B. Ramalinga Reddy has been requested to consider bringing down the bus pass fare. With this new arrangement, women workers can now go their work and return home safely and peacefully without any fear from all kind of sexual atrocities on them”, he said.
With regard to improving the health of women garment workers, the Labour Department had conducted a survey and found that around 1.5 lakh women were anaemic and are providing them medicines, he said.
Retirement benefits for staff of aided ITIs
Mr. Naik said that the Siddaramaiah cabinet for the first time had taken a major decision to extend retirement benefits to teaching and non-teaching staff of around 196 aided Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the State. “Chief Minister Mr. Siddaramaiah was keen to extend the benefits to the ITI staff who have been imparting training to students with poor economic background and from rural areas. I thank him profusely for his gesture. Now the staff, who retire between 2014 and 2042, would be getting gratuity, pension and other retirement benefits”, he said.
The Minister also said that Chief Minister has constituted a cabinet sub-committee, headed by R.V. Deshpande, Minister for Higher Education, to look into giving grant-in-aid to all eligible and privately managed educational institutions. The cabinet sub-committee, in which senior ministers H.K. Patil, Kimmane Rathnakar, T.B. Jayachandra and Mr. Naik were members, would be conducting a study about the infrastructure facilities, quality of teaching, eligibility among other things and submit a report to the cabinet very soon, he said.
