Govt to open e-Shram portal for registration of self-employed workers

New facility aims to add millions of unorganised workers to social security benefits

To encourage self-employed workers to register themselves on the e-Shram portal, the government will introduce a facility aimed at bringing on the database people who own or run micro enterprises or are hawkers or vendors.

 

“When the registrations are done, many a time people engaged in small businesses like hawking and vending, or running a kirana store don’t get themselves registered because they don’t consider themselves ‘workers’. However, essentially they are workers in the unorganised sector. Introducing a separate functionality on the portal to get these self-employed workers to register will help them to come within the ambit of this database,” an official said. 

Introducing this facility will help the labour ministry to have 200 million more unorganised-sector workers on the e-Shram portal, which remains outside any social-security net.  

“It is estimated that there are around 500 million unorganised workers in the country. Along with this new facility, we are working with ministries like finance, health, housing, skill development, road transport, and rural development and trying to integrate their databases with the e-Shram portal. So uncovered beneficiaries registered under numerous schemes administered by these ministries should be able to come on board and get registered in the database,” the official said. 

Launched in August 2021, the portal is a national database of unorganised workers, skilled and unskilled. The portal has details such as names, occupations, addresses, educational qualifications, and skill types of workers. The database now has over 303 million unorganised workers engaged in over 400 occupations, classified under 30 broad occupation sectors.  

“The labour ministry has launched the one-stop solution. More schemes are being continuously integrated on the portal. This new facility is expected to go live by the end of November,” the official added. 

Of those registered on the portal, 158.6 million are agricultural workers, 28.7 million are domestic workers, 27.3 million are in construction, and 19.7 million are in apparel. 

 Uttar Pradesh has the highest workers registered (83.7 million), followed by Bihar (29.5 million), West Bengal (26.4 million), and Madhya Pradesh (18.34 million). 

The government is planning to integrate the database with the Gati Shakti portal to improve logistics planning and increase employment. 

It is expected to reduce skill gaps and help nodal agencies plan their workforce requirements. 

Many a time projects face delay or the cost escalates due to the non-availability of suitable workers in a specific location.