Chennai: Owing to the increasing number of migrant workers travelling for employment opportunities to several states across India, the Labour Resource and Migrant Workers Welfare department of Bihar is setting up Labour Service Facilitation Centres (Shram Seva Suvidha Kendra) in three districts in Tamil Nadu: Chennai, Coimbatore, and Tirupur, to address grievances, welfare and workers’ rights within the next two months.Additional chief secretary of the labour resource and migrant workers welfare department of Bihar, K Senthil Kumar, said, “We have more than 3 crore Biharis going out to work interstate and internationally across various industries. So, the idea of the centre is to create a database on how many workers leave the state for work to help them with their livelihoods in every possible way.”The department, which has already begun this initiative in Karnataka, will address language and culture gaps by providing orientation to guest workers, workplace issues, social security scheme, access to education for the children of the guest workers, health insurance, accident and death compensation, and access to govt schemes in Tamil Nadu.“After conducting an extensive survey across 12 states including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi NCR, Kerala, Punjab, and Maharashtra, we will be creating 12 such centres in India. In Tamil Nadu, we’ve chosen Chennai, Coimbatore, and Tiruppur as these are the hotspots; with close to 2-3 lakh Biharis working in Tiruppur. The survey will also include their socio-economic conditions to see which govt schemes would be more suitable to them,” he added.Talking about the mass movement of labourers from Bihar, Senthil said that the Bihar govt is working towards creating job opportunities in industries and is also setting up a cement and sugar factory.
