Letter to BS: Organise the labour market, pay regular income to workers

This refers to the editorial “A push for labour-intensive manufacturing” by Radhicka Kapoor (June 30). The current mix of the labour in the country is in form of workers engaged in agriculture, construction activities, plumbing, delivery services etc. These are unorganised sectors and the workers do not have a regular stream of income and protection like minimum wages. Besides, we have the labourers employed under Ma­hatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. After taking into account the above categories, we have only a small percentage of labourers who are directly employed in factories. The solution therefore lies in pushing for labour-intensive manufacturing in sectors like textiles, automobiles, electronics etc, which may take time. 

Si­mul­taneously efforts can be taken to bring the unorganised labour under an umbrella similar to cooperatives. For instance, construction workers in a city can come under one cooperative. They must be provided with benefits like insurance, job guarantee etc. More importantly, all benefits should go to our citizens only, not the illegal refugees.

M Raghuraman  Mumbai

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