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NEW DELHI, Feb. 23

BARELY a day after the Cabinet gave an in-principle nod to amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act, the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has said that the Government is committed to ensuring social security for workers and a national policy in this regard is badly needed.

Inaugurating a seminar on `Evolving a national policy on social security' on the Golden Jubilee of the ESI scheme here on Saturday, Mr Vajpayee said, "The industrial scene has changed dramatically.... However, what has remained unchanged is the Government's commitment to ensure social security for the workers."

While stating that social security could not mean exclusively state-funded or state-administered schemes, he said, "We should strengthen and activate all the non-state providers of social security. They can become an excellent interface between the vast unorganised sector on the one hand, and the state and other organised providers of social security on the other."

The Prime Minister emphasised the need for a national policy. Mr Vajpayee said that economic activity could have no meaning if it did not guarantee labour welfare of the society at large.

Currently, social security schemes cover the organised sector, but it did not cover the unorganised sector. This sector has poorer workers whose need for social security is greater.

"Our agricultural workers, construction workers, rickshaw pullers, porters, hawkers, workers in restaurants and shops and such other businesses in the informal economy are today deprived of even minimal social security support," he said.

Mr Vajpayee said lack of reliable social security system for them is not their loss, it is also the loss of their employers and the nation.

The Prime Minister also said that there is need for greater flexibility in the provision of non-healthcare security benefits to employees. "By introducing flexibilities in the employees' ability to draw from their own savings and contributions, and helping them invest this amount in professionally managed funds of their choice, we may be able to achieve two important objectives. First of stimulating non-state provision of social security and second of creating the possibility of a higher but secure returns to employees," Mr Vajpayee said.

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