Labour Bureau to conduct three surveys to evaluate employment situation amid COVID-19

New Delhi: The Labour Bureau will conduct three surveys on migration, domestic workers, and professional bodies for evaluating the employment situation in the country, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, a release said on Friday. Union labour minister Santosh Gangwar in the first meeting of an expert group on Thursday informed that the Labour Bureau would conduct three surveys, a labour ministry release said. The expert group has been constituted by the government for a period of three years for providing technical guidance to Labour Bureau with respect to surveys on migration, professional bodies, domestic workers and other surveys. It is chaired by professor SP Mukherjee, Emeritus Professor, University of Kolkata, and consists of eminent economists, statisticians and government functionaries. “The government in an endeavour to understand the issues concerning special segments of labour has entrusted Labour Bureau with the task of conducting three ambitious surveys,” Gangwar said. While expressing deep concern over the difficulties faced by migrant workers in these pandemic times, he called upon the need for having reliable data on these workers and the issues being faced by them especially in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. “The database will enable the government to devise pragmatic solutions to improve their conditions and plan employment opportunities for them. “The migration survey to be undertaken by Labour Bureau will provide authentic estimates of the number of migrant workers in the country along with an assessment of the issues being faced by them,” he said. Given the urgent need of this data, the minister urged the expert group to finalise all the technical details related to this survey at the earliest so that the same can be launched without any delay. He also informed that to collect data on domestic workers, which constitute roughly 3 percent of the workers in our country, a first of its kind survey on domestic workers will also be carried out by Labour Bureau. The survey will further enable government to identify the issues being faced by this section and devise policies to improve their conditions. The minister stated that to effectively augment our available sources of data on employment and unemployment, the government has launched a Professional Bodies survey which will be undertaken by Labour Bureau. Given the high proportion of employment generated in professions like charted accountants, lawyers, and doctors, there’s a need to undertake a periodic estimation of the employment created in such professions.