New Delhi:The National Commission for Women (NCW) is planning to issue a notice to all State's Welfare Department especially in unorganized sectors for checking the status of rules and legislation laid out for ensuring the security of women migrant workers.
The decision came during a regional consultation on "law review related to inter-state women migrant workers" chaired by NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma in presence of few other panellists.
An integrated portal for women migrant workers, the implementation of the workplace sexual harassment law, and the inclusion of women domestic help are some of the key suggestions that were made during the deliberations for a legal review of the Interstate Migrant Workmen Act, 1979.
The NCW has initiated the talks to make the law more women-friendly. Moreover, Zonal consultations have begun, and two such consultations, with the south Indian states and eastern states, have been carried out.
The commission further said that it may look into issuing notice to all State's Welfare Departments especially in unorganized sectors for checking the status of rules and legislation laid out for ensuring the security of women migrant workers; and that there should be a provision of stringent penalty for violation of their social security.
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It also highlighted that the upskilling of women migrant workers has to be made a priority for them to prosper at challenging times like pandemic situation.
"The implementation of POSH Act and domestic violence needs to be bought in the law for avoiding violence against women migrant workers at the workplace. Women should be counted as individual earners and not along with their male/spouse counterparts. In view of this, proposed census 2021 needs to be leverage to get segregated statistics/data of women workers. Migrant women working as domestic workers need to be included as workforce and employability sector", the NCW suggested.
"The sources and destinations of women migrant workers is a specific focus that inter-states coordinators/department must attend to, for measuring accountability and must also involve stakeholders, including grassroots organization, volunteers and at the panchayat level, to create a state-friendly model to ensure implementation of laws and redressal mechanism during disaster management and challenging times", the commission added.
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The commission also suggested that the law's name be revised and the wage gap must be bridged to restore gender parity. Therefore, a key suggestion that emerged during the meeting was that employees of migrant labourers must implement the sexual harassment of women at the Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013).
It was also recommended that an integrated portal, where the details of these workers are readily available to government officials, need to be launched at the earliest.
It is worth noting the important consultation to review the law that ensures the right of the women migrant workers, came in the backdrop of a huge migration of workers who have already started moving to their homes due to loss of employment during the pandemic.
Emphasis is also laid by the women's commission on the recent announcement by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on initiatives focused on migrant labourers, street vendors, small traders, farmers etc.
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