Hyderabad: The number of cases pertaining to violation of labour laws is rising in Telangana. Over 10,000 cases are pending, including those for violations of Minimum Wages Act, Industrial Disputes Act, Employees Compensation Act, Shops and Establishments Act, among others.
What’s behind this delay? Sources say lack of manpower to clear cases and competition among states to attract more investments by liberalising labour laws as part of Ease of Doing Business are behind the problem.
The labour department implements 26 labour laws, which were enacted to ensure the welfare of employees and workers working in organised and unorganised sectors.
The Industrial Disputes Act has been framed to make provisions for settlements of industrial disputes between workers and managements. In the last fiscal 2016-17, as many as 1,100 cases were filed, but the department could resolve only 534 cases.
Under the Minimum Wages Act, the department inspected 1,593 establishments and filed 5,400 cases in 2016-17, of which it could dispose of only 1,464 cases.
These establishments were asked to pay compensation of '24 lakh for flouting the Act. The department has filed 102 cases against the managements.
Labour minister Nayani Narasimha Reddy blamed the previous governments for huge pendency of cases.
“The labour department was totally neglected by previous AP governments. No major recruitments were done for decades, resulting in vacant posts at all levels. This has adversely affected the functioning of department. After Telangana was formed, we took up the issue with the Chief Minister, who ordered fresh recruitments. The situation has now improved to some extent,” he said.
Mr. Reddy added that more than 20,000 cases were pending before the formation of Telangana. “We started clearing the backlog first due to which fresh cases have piled up,” Mr. Reddy said.
