Community Engagement for accessing Government’s flagship programmes on Basic Services (Social Security Schemes)

An awareness programme with regards to the government schemes was successfully completed in the district of Dhanbad, Jharkhand in collaboration with ACC Cements. The project started in April 2017 and ran its course till the end of December 2019. The programme focussed majorly on making people aware about various government run social security schemes, how they can benefit from them, the process of availing them as well as various grievance redressal mechanisms to register a complaint. Monthly meetings with the communities alongside the awareness and registration camps were conducted. Some of the notable achievements of the programme include the registration and distribution of Labour Identity Cards to the beneficiaries, uptake of online workers registration under the Unorganized Workers Act 2008 and successful benefits claimed through it. The efforts of the PHIA team were widely appreciated by the donor as well as the local administration.

The Labour Helpline spreads awareness among people to seek access to information about welfare schemes and lodge their grievances with the respective government departments. The extended project is strengthening the Labour helpline by training human resources and filling up infrastructural gaps existing in the project. The ‘Labour Helpline’ works with the helpline number 18003456526 and the background details of all callers, enquiries made and grievances reported are registered. Out of the total 200 calls registered 140 calls were inter-state calls from the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Naidu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The calls registered were towards enquiry and assistance towards Migration, Minimum wages, Labour card, Child labour, Online Registration Process (BOCW Workers), BOCW Schemes and Entitlements, Job Harassments, Grievance Registered Process etc. All the sectoral registered calls were formally provided to the department and followed up for further processes and information about the schemes and updates about the same were advised to the callers.