india

Updated: Mar 24, 2020 15:07 IST

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to roll out emergency welfare measures, including financial support, to millions of construction workers who are in distress due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

In her letter dated March 23 to the Prime Minister, Gandhi requested him to advise the state building and other construction workers’ welfare boards in this regard.

Gandhi also wrote to Congress chief ministers Captain Amarinder Singh (Punjab), Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan), Bhupesh Baghel (Chhattisgarh) and V Narayanasamy (Puducherry) to ensure that state welfare boards should provide wage support to registered beneficiaries given that a significant amount of building and other construction workers welfare cess remains unutilised.

“Over the last week, lakhs of migrant workers in major cities across India have left for their hometowns and villages fearing a prolonged economic downturn. As the second-largest employer in India, over 44 million construction workers are now faced with a precarious future. Many are stranded in cities and are deprived of their livelihoods due to stringent lockdown measures,” she wrote in her letter to the Prime Minister.

She referred to the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 that provides for various welfare measures for workers and the constitution of state welfare boards and welfare fund.

“It is reported that the welfare boards collected cess amounting to Rs 49,688.07 crore till March 31, 2019. However, only an amount of Rs 19,379.922 crore had been spent,” said Gandhi, who is also the chairperson of the Congress parliamentary party (CPP).

She said Canada and several other countries have announced wage subsidy measures as part of their Covid-19 economic response plan.

More than 600 districts have been placed under lockdown in an effort to stop the coronavirus disease or Covid-19 that has afflicted nearly 500 across India.

Commercial airlines have been grounded, passenger trains stopped and state governments have also severely curtailed the movement of people except to maintain the supply line of essential commodities services.