The software industry body Nasscom is all set to assist Karnataka to rewrite its Labour regulation. It is going to be prepared keeping in mind the changing requirement of private businesses. The present draft of regulation is redundant, and there is a need to redraft it in accordance with the current business scenario and with the changing technology.
According to State labour minister S Suresh Kumar, the government will not only revisit the labour regulation to make them relevant, but will also bring in additional online services so that there is no interference between industries and the labour
offices. Kumar also had a 90-minute interaction with senior executives of technology, biotech, automobile
and manufacturing companies. At present there is already a 24 hours labour helpline, and the government is going to also introduce Whatsapp and text messaging facilities soon. Out of the 54 services the labour department provides, 30 services are already online and the remaing comes within the ambit of Sakala. Sakala, or timely service, stipulates the time within which the government department must provide the service requested by the applicant. An executive urged the minister to exempt technology firms of less than 100 employees from contract labour regulation as the team there consists of a highly skilled people. A startup entrepreneur also asked the minister to relax the startups from mandatory registration. A startup takes time to stabilize in the first few years and will have to deal with a lot of hassle if a labour officer turns up for inspection. An woman executive drew the government attention to the stringent requirement in the composition of POSH (prevention of sexual harassment) committee. The regulation needs new members after every three years but with dearth of people being well-versed in investigative skills, the company is finding difficult to get replacements. There was also complaint raised by an executive of a multinational company regarding government’s move to link Aadhar number of employees with their Provident Fund account. Many employees have already refused to provide their Aadhar number citing a Supreme Court judgement in Aadhar case.