Diversion of labour welfare funds for private quota vaccines irks trade unions

Labour's love lost

The labour department’s decision to spend Rs 15.6 crore of the Construction Workers’ Welfare Fund to purchase 2 lakh vaccine doses from the state’s private quota of Covid vaccines has not gone down well with trade unions.

The trade unions have questioned why free vaccine doses are not being provided to the labourers under the government quota, when there is no shortage of vaccines for now.

The All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), in a statement, said, “This decision is highly improper and looks to enrich private hospitals at the cost of workers instead of facilitating vaccines from the government.”

State committee member of AICCTU, Maitreyi Krishnan, told DH, “If the Labour Commissioner is saying there’s surplus funds, then why can’t the same money be used to provide laptops to children of construction workers so that they can attend online classes hassle-free? When funds can be used for housing and education, why pay for private quota vaccines?”

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General secretary of AICCTU, P P Appanna, said the Karnataka State Construction Workers Unions’ Coordination Committee had submitted a memorandum to the Labour over the ‘misuse’ of funds.

“Apart from 30 lakh construction workers, the plan is to vaccinate 10 lakh migrant workers too. This amounts to paying around 400 private hospitals Rs 624 crore at Rs 780 per dose to administer the vaccines to workers,” he said.

“Majority of the workers haven’t been given ration kits, medical kits, permanent houses and education. When these funds can be used for all these welfare activities why pay for private quota vaccines?

In 2021-22, a budgetary allocation of Rs 2,688.90 crore has been made and we have asked for a probe into why expenditure has been made without calling for tenders. Already there is a lot of scope for corruption here, paying for private quota vaccines is another way of exhausting these funds needlessly,” he said.

Labour Minister Shivaram Hebbar said, “We haven’t invested money on a large scale. Initially, only 1.5 lakh labourers were vaccinated under the government quota. Both the central and the state government were of the opinion that waiting for government quota vaccines will cause a delay in achieving substantial coverage and that the Labour department should take up vaccination of labourers.”

“If the state government gets more vaccines, we will take it from the government quota itself. We will reduce our purchase from the private sector henceforth as now vaccines are being supplied by the Centre,” Hebbar added.