Advisor Farooq Khan stresses on adoption of best practices for cess collection in L&E deptt

Advisor to Lieutenant Governor, Farooq Ahmad Khan, today laid stress on the adoption of best practices for collection of cess by the Labour and Employment (L&E) department in J&K.

Advisor, while chairing a meeting held to work out and plan reforms in collection and expenditure of the amounts collected as cess by the Labour department, said that the collected amount is being used for the welfare of poor workers so everybody should passionately involve in it.

Commissioner, Jammu Municipal Corporation; Avny Lavasa, Vice-Chairperson, Jammu Development Authority; Babila Rakhwal, Labour Commissioner, J&K; Abdul Rashid War CEO, Board of Construction Workers; Peer Muzaffar, Chief Engineer, R&B, Jammu besides other officers were present in the meeting.

Advisor Khan asked the officers to look for a mechanism of collection of cess that is efficient and non-evasive. He said that government doesn’t want to create hiccups in the building of infrastructure in the public or private sector yet there should be some check on levying of cess appropriately as per the rules in vogue as its beneficiaries are the poor families of construction workers.

Advisor further stated that the department should fully utilize its human and technological resources to bring transparency and efficiency in cess collection from different sources. He also laid emphasis on the registration of all the construction workers so that in case of eventuality a worker receives the necessary assistance as envisaged under the law.

Khan also advised the cess levying departments to advance full cooperation to the construction workers board in making the process more reliable and result oriented. He said that such amounts helped a lot in lending assistance to these workers during the prevailing pandemic. He maintained that the health of workers’ families and education of their children are the primary benefits met out of this amount so it needs to be collected, safeguarded, and expended as efficiently as possible and each of the stakeholders should give his best to ensure it.

Advisor was informed that currently 1% cess is levied on all the commercial and government constructions which is collected by Engineering departments including JMC and JDA. The collected amount is then transferred in bulk to the board for the welfare of labour class working here.

It was further informed in the meeting that the collected amount is being utilized in providing assistance to the registered workers in case of exigencies, sickness and education of their wards. Besides, the new building code proposed in centre has a lot more benefits and welfare measures included in it for these workers.