Labour Secretary stresses on the Need to improve women participation in GDP

By: WE Staff | Wednesday, 29 December 2021

Sunil Barthwal, the Labour Secretary, emphasised the need of increasing women's participation and promised that labour rules would be implemented shortly.

“Sunil Barthwal, secretary (labour and employment), Ministry of Labour & Employment, Govt of India today (on Tuesday) emphasised that the government has tried to make the new labour codes as much contemporary as possible and tried to ensure the contemporariness of the world we are living,” industry body FICCI said in a statement.

According to him, the administration has taken a number of steps to increase women's participation in the workforce.

He was speaking at the AIOE (All India Organization of Employersvirtual )'s '87th Annual General Meeting.' on the subject of the 'Impact of New Labour Codes on Sustainable and Equitable Growth.'

Barthwal also said, “Unless women participation improves, the contribution to GDP (gross domestic product) from woman workers will not be to the extent, we want this economy to grow. We have looked at the labour codes from various viewpoints, including employers, workers, women and youth, and it is a good amalgamation of different point of views.” He added that when “we look at the future of work, then we will have to look at different employment models and how we can do justice to all models”.

According to Barthwal, the government is working with the states because this statute is part of the constitution's concurrent list, and rules must be established at both the federal and state levels.

"We have pre-published the regulations at the central government level and are ready to implement the Code," he said, adding that "as soon as the majority of the state governments write their rules, we will be ready to apply the Code."

In addition, the labour secretary stated that more states are becoming involved in the notification and finalisation of rules.

The two guiding ideas on which the new standards have been designed, according to Barthwal, are ease of living for workers and ease of conducting business for companies.

He emphasised that the inclusion of gig and platform workers was a significant element in the labour code.