Ministry of Labour organizing three day Conference on 'safety'

New Delhi, Mar 16 (KNN) The Ministry of Labour is organising a three day ‘vision zero’ conference in Delhi to focus on occupational health and safety.

Organised by a leading German fair organising body, the programme has a registration fee of Rs. 5000 per participant.

Three-day long ‘INOSH Expo’ is also being organised during these days on protective equipment and related subject.

Inaugurated by the Labour Minister, the Exhibition has a price tag of Rs. 12000 per m2 almost at international rates.

While the agenda of the three day conference is not available, it will surely surgically dissect the pathetic shop floor safety issues in Indian workplaces.

While such discussions may bring learned opinions on what measures need to be adopted to improve workplace safety, the moot question will remain; how to implement them in the vast unorganised sector.

With a patriarchal mindset, no entrepreneur in India, however small he may be, would like to risk the life and limbs of his workers; however the challenge is to get a viable solution to the safety issues.

While large corporates can afford costly protective devices both on the machines and the men, such allocation is beyond the means of crores of enterprises in the unorganised sector.

So the thrust of the Government initiative in shop floor safety should have been on developing viable safety models for these vast sectors.

And for that intensive discussions with the sectoral and cluster level players should have been initiated by the Government sponsored experts.

For the unorganised sector such ‘vision zero’ will deliver zero value as neither the cluster level actors have been invited to the discussions nor can they afford to pay the hefty participation fee.

In fact,  of late it is being observed that the Labour Ministry, supposed to look into the welfare of the labours, have almost written off the 4 crore plus enterprises in the unorganised sectors.

That may be the reason why they have forgot to re - work on the number of labour reform measures, including the labour code and liberalisation of EPF and ESI Acts.

The Government may learn a little from our neighbouring country, who has worked painstakingly to improve workers welfare and environmental impacts to a reasonable level.

Without that organising of big Jamborees may serve little purpose for the average Indian worker. (KNN/ DB)