Labour Min hopeful on passage of 3 bills in current session

After expressing strong optimism over clearing of as many as nine bills in the Winter Session, the Labour Ministry is now pinning hopes on passage of only three bills in the ongoing session of Parliament.
Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya today said that two bills -- Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012, and Payment of Bonus (Amendment) Bill, 2015 -- will "definitely" come up for discussion in the current session and the Ministry is also hopeful of placing the Labour Code on Wages before Parliament.
"The Bonus Bill has been introduced in the Lok Sabha and now it is to be listed in the business schedule. Afterwards a discussion will take place and then it will be passed. The Child Labour Bill has been introduced in the Rajya Sabha. It needs to be discussed and passed," he told reporters here.

"Only these two bills. We are also hopeful of the Code on Wages. The Ministry has finished the tripartite discussions on this, taken views of the Law Ministry and it will be sent to the Cabinet for approval. We are hopeful that this bill can come in Parliament," the Minister said.
The government wants to rationalise labour laws and these laws are in the interest of workers and will protect their rights, the minister said, adding the purpose of this exercise is employment generation and improving the ease of doing business.
In its bid to improve ease of doing business, Dattatreya in October had said the ministry had plans to table nine bills in the Winter Session.

The bills included the Child Labour Amendment Bill, Payment of Bonus Bill, Small Factories (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Bill, the Labour Code on Wages and Labour Code on Industrial Relations.

The other bills were amendment to the Employees Provident Fund & Miscellaneous Provisions Bill, Minimum Wage Amendment Bill, the Employees State Insurance Act and the Building and Other Construction Workers Related Laws Amendment Bill.
However, last month Dattaterya said his Ministry expects to place six bills before Parliament in the Winter Session.
The bills on Minimum Wage, Employees State Insurance Act and the Building and Other Construction Workers Related Laws Amendment Bill did not make the list this time.

When asked if the Opposition would cooperate, the
minister said the Opposition is not in a mood to cooperate with the government, particularly in the interest of the poor.
"They express their opinion in the discussions, but their abruptions indicates that they don't want any development. That's why all the bills which are related to the poor people they are upsetting them. It clearly shows that there is a political motivation behind it," he added.
Dattatreya further said: "I can say the Congress and Left parties, they have their political agenda. They are afraid that if the bills are coming then faster development will take place and the credit may go to NDA and Narendra Modi.

"They don't want to go to the agenda of governance. They want to go to some of the communal agenda, they want to create communal tensions, they want to create communal ill-feelings. That's why they are doing all these things daily in Parliament.