The Labour Department officials in the district are in a quandary with the introduction of National Pension Scheme (NPS)-Lite, a scheme aimed at extending the coverage of NPS to the weaker and economically disadvantaged sections of the society.
The Labour Department here has no data of the construction workers, who have registered to avail the benefits provided under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions Service) Act, 1996.
The department officials had registered 1.10 lakh people engaged in construction activity. The workers were issued identity cards etc. The department, however, has no data of the workers registered with the Andhra Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board.
The problem came to light when the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) asked the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) to enrol the construction workers for the pension scheme. The DRDA would have to enrol workers not exceeding 5,000 workers in the district.
The SERP had asked the Assistant Commissioners of Labour to furnish the list of building and construction workers to the Project Directors of DRDA-IKP so that the PDs would take up the enrolment process. Following which, the Labour officials began searching for the data, and could not find any data of the 1.10 lakh workers registered with it.
The situation was no better in other districts as well. More than 12 lakh people were registered with the Board across the State. However, there was no consolidated data, sources say.
The officials say that the problem cropped up due to non-availability of software. The data from the district was sent to the Board which has to consolidate and maintain the data. However, no such measures were taken. On the other hand, the Labour Department here also has no copy of the data, sources say.
As the NPS-Lite, the worker in the age group of 18-50 would have to pay Rs.200, the Board would pay Rs.800 and the Central Government would contribute Rs.1,000 taking the total to Rs.2,000. It aims at building up a corpus sufficient enough to buy an annuity for their old age.
