NEW DELHI: The Labour Ministry introduced a host of reforms this year, including relaxing of laws to attract more investments but faced stiff resistance from trade unions who termed the policies as "anti-worker".
The ministry also managed to get two bills - Apprentices Amendment Bill 2014 and the Labour Laws (Exemption from furnishing returns and maintaining registers by certain establishments) Amendment Bill, 2014 passed in both the Houses of Parliament this Winter session despite widespread protest.
The new dispensation after assuming power, introduced a slew of schemes through Shramev Jayate (work alone triumphs) programme launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who asserted that ease of doing business is "essential" to ensure that "Make-in-India" campaign is successful.
The schemes included portability through universal account number for Employee Provident Fund (EPF), single window portal to enable doing business with Labour Ministry and labour inspection scheme in central sphere.
Through the dedicated 'Shram Suvidha Portal', the ministry gave its nod to allotment of Labour Identification Number (LIN) to nearly 6 lakh units and allowed them to file online compliance for 16 out of 44 labour laws.
To put an end to inspector-raj, the ministry developed a transparent labour inspection scheme to check arbitrariness.
While units for inspection till now were selected locally without any objective criteria, now a computerised list of inspections is being generated randomly on predetermined objective criteria. Complaints based inspection will also be determined centrally based on data and evidence.
The Ministry also made it mandatory to upload inspection reports within 72 hours of inspection. Another scheme launched during the year was Universal Account Number which enables 4.17 crore employees to have their Provident Fund account portable, hassle-free and universally accessible.
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