Only 10-12% migrant workers registered this year by TN labour dept

CHENNAI: Irrespective of the heavy inflow of Inter State Migrant (ISM) workers into Tamil Nadu, the registration of these labourers remains at a snail’s pace. The state government’s labour department has registered over 8 lakh workers from other states in the last two years.

Be it the multi-crore Metro Rail project in the city or the textile sector in South India’s Manchester City Coimbatore, migrant workers are the main driving force. By gradually entering into other sectors including agriculture and related works, they are playing a decisive role in the development of the state. However, they remain invisible or left outfrom government records and welfare schemes.

Sensing the necessity to have real-time data and record the movement of the ISM labourers, the labour department launched an exclusive web portal - http://labour.tn.gov.in/ism last June to encourage their registration. The employers can use their registration certificate or license issued by the labour department to log in and upload the details of their workers. However, this method did not fetch the desired result. “So far, 8.17 lakh ISM workers have registered through the web portal. These numbers account for around 12 per cent of the migrant workers from other states,” said an official in the department.

According to rough estimates of the labour department officials and experts, nearly 70 lakh ISM workers are there in the State, and among them, only 10% to 12% have been registered till the first week of August this year.

Though the employers are prohibited from engaging ISM workers without registering them as per the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1979, it has not been followed strictly. It was evident as per the data available with the DT NEXT.

According to the data, a total of 8,71,043 ISM workers have registered till August 8 this year. Out of them, 1,60,989 were from Tirupur district, while 1.08 lakh and 1.03 lakh workers registered were from Coimbatore and Kancheepuram districts respectively. The state capital, Chennai, has only 81,925 registered ISM workers.

They were categorised into 22 sectors and the majority of them were concentrated in factories related to manufacturing (2.49 lakh), textile-related factories (2.12 lakh), and construction (1.77 lakh).

The low registration is the result of employers’ neglect of their workforce and failure to take appropriate measures.

“There are hiccups in registration. The department is making all possible efforts to reach out to industries to enroll ISM workers. We have achieved registration to some extent in factories and manufacturing sectors,” said another official.

For instance, a significant number of migrant workers have been engaged in agriculture and related workers, particularly in delta districts. However, only 137 workers have been registered in these sectors. Interestingly, 158 ISM workers, including 115 in Tiruppur, have been employed in urban local bodies.

It may be recalled that several hundreds of inter state migrants have been left out during the government’s measures to disburse relief kits during the Covid-19 pandemic. The labour department along with the line department had managed to reach out to only around 5 lakh labourers so far.