Even if workers have A/Cs, they have to take a day’s off to withdraw money: MSMEs

New Delhi, Dec 9 (KNN) The Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya held meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to discuss ways to help workers in the industrial areas, especially in the remote locations, in the backdrop of demonetization.

Dattatreya requested Finance Minister to initiate steps to deploy mobile ATMs in all the workers/industrial clusters especially in remote and rural areas where there is pre-dominance of workers.

He also discussed to take steps to address the wage payment related issues, issues of plantation workers and construction workers.

Dattatreya also apprised Jaitley about the campaign undertaken by the Labour & Employment Ministry to open bank accounts and stated that so far 52,852 camps have been held till date all over India where in 13,76,243 accounts opened.

Talking to KNN, PPS Gulati, President, Noida Industries Association, said, “Now, most of the labours are getting payment through cheques only. Ones who don’t have an account are facing problems. The Mobile ATMs have not been deployed to the industrial areas so far.”

He said the camps are being organized for opening new accounts of the workers.

“But in the present scenario, opening an account is not helping them as at the end of the day one has to stand in queue for long hours to withdraw the money. And for that they have to take day offs at the loss of their and units works.”

YC Jain, President, Okhla Industrial Area, said, “Payments to workers are now being done in cheques or in instalments. But the companies don’t have cash. Most of the companies are not working and are shut.”

He said the banks urgently need to sort out the problem and they have to open the banks on Sundays as well so that the workers will not have to take leaves on a working day.

He said the Labour Department is coordinating with the banks for opening bank accounts of workers and they are working on this.

As far as mobile ATMs are concerned, we have not seen that so far here, he added.

Meanwhile, Dattatreya while appreciating the efforts of the Finance Minister in reviving the old lower denomination notes, also highlighted the importance of issuing more and more lower denomination notes (Rs.10, Rs.20, Rs.50 & Rs.100) in large numbers, as this will be beneficial to a large number of workers.

Dattatreya also requested to expedite and print more Rs.500/- notes for circulation and to ensure their availability to industrial and other institutions which employ large number of workers. (KNN Bureau)