NEW DELHI, Aug 20: Union Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar on Thursday called for total digitalisation of the Labour Bureau to expand its outreach.
The minister made the remarks while launching the new logo of the Labour Bureau, a wing of the labour ministry.
Gangwar asked the Bureau to increase its outreach by way of total digitalisation of its processes and use of Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence in its day-to-day operations, a labour ministry statement said.
He further said that to increase the Bureau’s outreach, more regional offices will be opened in the country.
The minister also said the century-old 44 Labour laws are being subsumed in four codes, out of this the Wage Code is already enacted and other three codes on Social Security, Industrial Relations & Occupational Safety and Health and Working Conditions have already been introduced in the Lok Sabha.
Once these Codes are enacted, India’s ranking on ‘ease of doing business’ will go very high and India will be a dream destination for investment, he added.
The Labour Bureau should collect data in seamless way for this necessary provisions in Codes and the rules will be provided to give statutory powers to the Bureau, he stated.
The newly launched logo represents that the Labour Bureau is a data-based organization dealing in data related to workers and work.
The logo also represents the three goals of accuracy, validity and reliability that the Bureau strives to achieve in producing quality data.
The Labour Bureau was established as a Directorate of Cost of Living at Shimla in 1941 with the objective of conducting Family Budget Enquiries and compiling Cost of Living Index Numbers for important centers in the country on a uniform basis.
The need for more comprehensive labour statistics in the context of formulation of labour policy led to the setting up of the Labour Bureau on October 1, 1946 by rechristening the Directorate of Cost of Living with added functions.
Since then, the Labour Bureau is engaged in collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination of statistics on different facets of labour at all-India level.
The mandate of the Bureau is to act as a storehouse of important economic indicators like Consumer Price Index for industrial workers, agriculture & rural labour numbers for industrial, agricultural and rural labourers.
Besides, it looks into wage rate indices and data on employment/unemployment, industrial relations, socio-economic conditions in the organized and unorganized sector of industry etc.
The Labour Bureau is the apex national-level organization in the field of labour statistics which performs significant functions such as labour intelligence, research, monitoring/ evaluation and training. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
