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Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 19
Noting that construction workers contributed to nation-building “in their own small way”, the Supreme Court on Monday issued a series of directions to the Centre and states to ensure proper utilisation of thousands of crore rupees collected as cess from builders towards their welfare.
A Bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta ordered the Ministry of Labour and Employment, state governments and union territories to put in place proper machinery for registration of establishments and construction workers at the earliest.
“…there is a tremendous amount of construction activity going on all over the country and there is no reason why establishments involved in the construction activity, both formal as well as non-formal, should not pay the cess, especially when they are utilising the services of the construction workers…there is no reason why the construction workers…should be denied their entitlements and benefits…,” the Bench said.
It asked the Ministry of Labour and Employment to frame by September 30 a model scheme in consultation with all stakeholders, including NGOs, for the purpose.
The order came on a petition filed by the National Campaign Committee for Central Legislation on Construction Labour, alleging that the statutory cess collected from realty firms under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, (BOCW Act) and the Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Cess Act, 1996, for the welfare of construction workers was not being utilised properly for want of an effective mechanism to identify the beneficiaries.
According to an affidavit filed by the National Legal Services Authority on December, 14, 2016, the amount of cess that ought to have been collected was about Rs 70,000 crore. Construction workers not only assisted in building infrastructure, but also in building the nation, in their own small way, it said.
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