GB Nagar labour dept launches app to locate migrant workers, transfer them ₹1,000

There are nearly 38,000 registered daily wage earners in Gautam Budh Nagar district, but the labour department is unable to locate even half of them to transfer a monthly financial assistance of ₹1,000 to help them tide over the lockdown and lack of employment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

HT Image

However, to get the bank details of remaining workers, the district labour department has recently launched a mobile app, on which the workers can upload their bank details themselves.

The amount is being paid to workers as a direct benefit transfer (DBT) on the orders of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, on March 21. He had ordered that ₹1,000 be provided to each of the 20.37 lakh construction workers registered with the labour department and to each of the 15 lakh self-employed cart owners, small shop owners and rickshaw pullers on an immediate basis. The amount, funded by the labour cess , will be transferred to their accounts as DBT.

Gautam Budh Nagar deputy commissioner (labour) Pradeep Kumar Singh said of the 38,000 bona fide workers registered with his department, the bank account numbers of only 18,000 were available. “The amount of ₹1,000 has already been transferred to each of these accounts. To locate the remaining workers, we have launched a mobile application ‘UPBOCW’, which is the abbreviation of Uttar Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board. After downloading this application, the workers will be asked to fill their registration and Aadhaar numbers. Thereafter, they will get a one-time password (OTP) and after entering the OTP, they will be eligible for the DBT,” he said.

Surprisingly, contrary to the figures given by the state labour department on its website, which shows 1,46,380 under ‘last year renewal eligible labour’, the district labour department claims that only about 38,000 of them are bona fide. “Most of those overall figures are from when registrations were done manually with the labour department, prior to the digitisation. So, we are considering only those who have registered with their Aadhaar numbers,” Singh said.

He also said since most construction workers in the district are mostly migrants, his department is working hard to locate all of them. “While all construction companies and other firms have been asked to share their workers’ bank account details, we are also making calls and sending messages on numbers available with the labour department,” he said.

Singh further said that unlike other districts of Uttar Pradesh, Gautam Budh Nagar does not have a large number of MGNREGA workers. “The labour department is repeatedly making appeals, through all business establishments in Gautam Budh Nagar, to all workers, asking them not to leave for the home towns,” he said.