Indian Railways: Shramik Kalyan E-App To Ensure Fairness In Wage Payments To Over 3.8 Lakh Contract Workers

In a move that increases the welfare of contract workers and ensures transparency, Indian Railways developed Shramik Kalyan e-application.

As on 9 March 2021, around 15,812 contractors and 3,81,831 contract workers are registered on this portal. Along with this, a total number of 48,312 letter of acceptance (LOA) related to Rs 3,495 crore wage amount and about six crores man-days are registered on this portal.

All Public Sector Units (PSUs) working under the Ministry of Railways are also using this e-application.

This e-application ensures the compliance with minimum wages act and also ensures that contractual workers working in Indian Railways get their rightful due by enforcing the contractors to regularly upload wage payment data into e-application.

It helps Railways as principal employer, in keeping vigil over wages disbursed by contractors to contract workers, the Ministry of Railways said in a statement.

The portal enables all the contractors of different units of Railways i.e., divisions, workshops, PUs, PSUs to register themselves on e-application and subsequently add work orders issued by different Railway units to them.

The contractors have to create a profile of each contract worker engaged by him for the work and update the wages provided to him on a regular basis.

Railway authorities who approve bills, before passing the contractors' bills, have to check whether the contract workers’ wage data have been uploaded by the contractor on e-application. For ensuring compliance of the same, necessary changes have also been made in the contract conditions.

Provision is available in the e-application to generate ID of the contract worker and also to send SMSs from time to time about wages paid to him, contribution made to EPF and ESIC.

To have transparency, the public view also shows an at-a-glance summary of relevant details like number of active work orders, details of workers engaged and gross wages paid to workers till date across different Railway units.