In the draft rules, among 681 listed professions, armed security guards, supervisors, surveyors, and carpenters (class I) are proposed to be treated as highly skilled professionals; electricians, tailors and drivers are skilled; cooks and cobblers as semi-skilled and dairy coolies, office peons and sweepers as unskilled.
Gandhi and his Congress party have been asking the government to shelve its plans on the Central Vista project and give priority to improving the country's medical infrastructure amid the COVID-19 pandemic to save people's lives.
The use of such robots can not only save lives but can also help road construction companies cut down on labour costs.
The Centre stated in its report that it wanted media houses not to publish the news of COVID-19, without asking the central government authorities, who are assigned to talk to media houses, keeping in view the welfare and benefit of migration labourers and other people due to the pandemic.
Nangiohbok Rymbai, a graduate in economics who works as a daily wage labourer in Shillong, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what he would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
India is looking at near close to double-digit growth this year and the country will be one of the fastest-growing economies, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said. The minister also emphasised that she expects the economic growth next year to be in the range of 7.5-8.5 per cent, which will be sustained for the next decade.
British lawmakers will debate the issue of press freedom and safety of protesters in India next Monday in response to an e-petition which had crossed the 100,000-signature threshold required for such a debate, the House of Commons Petitions Committee confirmed on Wednesday.
A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M R Shah said industries and employees need each other and they should sit together to arrive at a settlement on the issue of payment of wages.
The central government has asked public sector undertakings to dissuade their employees from participating in the bandh.
Giving a relief to exporters community, the government on Thursday said it will release Rs 56,027 crore to exporters against pending tax refunds under different incentive schemes for outbound shipments. The amount will be disbursed to more than 45,000 exporters. Briefing the media about the decision, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that the Rs 56,027 crore, which is being released under various export promotion schemes, is over and above duty remission of Rs 12,454 crore for the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Export Products (RoDTEP) Scheme and Rs 6,946 crore for Rebate of State and Central Levies and Taxes (RoSCTL) Scheme already announced.
According to the law, the contribution "should not be more than 5 per cent of the amount paid to gig workers. The government is likely to start seeking contribution from gig companies towards the fund from April 1, 2021.
The Centre has allocated Rs 73,000 crore to the rural employment guarantee programme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act for the next fiscal 2021-22, substantially lower than the actual expenditure of Rs 1.11 lakh crore in the current fiscal which included an additional Rs 40,000 crore for the scheme given by the government in the wake of the pandemic's impact on the economy.
The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's apex decision making body, the Central Board of Trustees, had decided to provide 8.65 per cent rate of interest on EPF deposits last December.
India has called the remarks by foreign leaders on protests by farmers as "ill-informed" and "unwarranted" as the matter pertained to the internal affairs of a democratic country.
Currently, industries with up to 100 workers were allowed to do this.
The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday confirmed it had received the letter.
The bill to amend payment of gratuity Act in order to double the ceiling of tax-free gratuity to Rs 20 lakh, would soon be placed before the Union Cabinet for approval.
According to an official statement, in a letter to Goyal, Pawar said that the migrant workers, stranded in different parts of Maharashtra, may step out in big numbers to return to their states when the train services resume after the lockdown is lifted. This can lead to law and order problem (with workers coming out in big numbers), he added. To avoid this, the railway ministry should run special trains, he demanded.
Most economists were of the view that the NSSO should release the data, as any move to withhold it will dent the image of country's statistical system.
What some of us think are strong, bold and firm decisions are cruel, harsh and unwanted for others. This is what we need to consider when we look at what has happened with the farm laws, asserts Aakar Patel.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan announced on Monday that his government will allow India to send a humanitarian shipment of 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat to neighbouring Afghanistan through its territory after finalisation of the transit modalities.
While FMCG companies were not barred from carrying out their operations during the 21-day lockdown, since most manufacture staples and essential products, capacity utilisation remained poor, owing to the restricted movement of raw materials, finished goods, and labour.
The government on Saturday announced a string of measures, including a pension for dependents of those having lost their lives due to COVID-19, among other benefits for the families who lost their earning members to the pandemic.
If 2019-20 (FY20) was an unusual year for highway construction in India, with the pace of work slowing down for the first time since the Narendra Modi government assumed power in 2014, largely due to the general elections in May and liquidity crunch, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21 (FY21) only made matters worse with lockdowns and labour unavailability. The pace of highway construction in 2021-22 (FY22) has not been able to bulldoze the pandemic barriers in a year marred by two Covid-19 waves - the second at the start of the fiscal year, the third towards the close. With localised lockdowns and restrictions on mobility, highway construction growth in the country has now fallen to a five-year low.
While the number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 7,409, as many as 764 people have been cured and discharged, and one had migrated, it said. Of the total 273 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 127 fatalities, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 36, Gujarat at 22 and Delhi at 19.
Thousands of farmers are protesting on various borders of Delhi since November 26, seeking repeal of three farm laws enacted in September.
The protests brought home the fact that the Sri Lankan public is in no mood for halfway measures, as voices against Rajapaksa 'family rule' and 'securitisation' of the civilian administration began sidestepping the more critical economic crisis, affecting the nation and afflicting the individual, observes Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy.
The top court said it is not satisfied with the efforts of the Centre as well as the states on the issue of registration of workers in unorganised sectors.
The country's textile industry is concentrated in a few pockets of Gujarat and Maharashtra in the west and Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the south.
Expressing the government's commitment to continue with reforms, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday assured India Inc that it is ready to do everything required to revive and support economic growth hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stressing that there is a need to promote growth as it helps bring down poverty, she however said it would not be at the cost of inflation. RBI has been mandated to keep inflation at 4 per cent, with tolerance level of 2 per cent on either side.
The SOP said priority will be given to compelling cases of in distress, including migrant workers and labourers who have been laid off, short term visa holders faced with expiry of visas, persons with medical emergency/ pregnant women and elderly persons or those required to return to India due to death of family member, and students.
The plea also states that the petitioners are also questioning why or how the project constitutes an "essential service", merely because some executive mandated contractual deadline has to be met.
The Essential Defence Services Bill, 2021, introduced by Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt amid din created by the Opposition over three new agri laws and the alleged Pegasus snooping controversy, seeks to replace an ordinance issued in June.
Thackeray said he was in constant touch with the Centre over the issue of running more trains to ferry migrant labourers, stranded due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown, to their native places.
Retirement fund body EPFO net added 14.81 lakh subscribers in August 2021, reflecting a growing trend in net payroll for the first five months of this fiscal. The provisional payroll data of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) released on Wednesday highlights that it added around 14.81 lakh net subscribers during the month of August 2021, a labour ministry statement said. The data reflects a growing trend in net payroll for the first five months of the current financial year, it added.
Shalini Gupta, a freelance writer from Pudicherry, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what she would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
The ministry of home affairs on Wednesday issued a fresh set of guidelines to let migrant workers, students, tourists and pilgrims stranded in different parts of the country to get back home.
Maharashtra has the most number of coronavirus cases with 23,401 cases.
'The actual amount due to Jet Airways employees is Rs 1,200 crore, and the management is giving only Rs 52 crore.'
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