The labour ministry has initiated a move to formulate provident fund rules for informal sector labourers in a bid to ensure the workers’ economic and social security.
The ministry is working on a draft of the rules which will be devised under a provision of the Bangladesh Labour Welfare Foundation Act 2006.
Under the rules, the labourers who work in the sector out of the purview of labour act will be entitled to provident fund facility.
There are 42 industrial sectors including garment, leather, pharmaceuticals, jute, ship-breaking, cold storage, plastic, chemical, fertilizer and those are known as formal sectors and the workers of the sectors are protected by the labour act.
There are lots of workers in the country’s informal sectors including agricultural worker, blacksmith, carpenter, rickshaw-van puller, domestic workers, construction, electric, shoe, steel and engineering, welding workers, security guards, cleaner, tailoring workers and hawkers but they do not work under any regulated bodies, labour secretary Mikail Shipar told New Age.
He said that the work for formulating rules for the informal sector labourers’ provident fund is in the initial stage and the draft would be placed in the next meeting of the foundation.
According to the labour secretary, to ensure social and financial security of the informal sector labourers the ministry has taken the initiative of introducing provident fund for them.
The provident fund would be formed through the contribution by the workers and government set workers welfare fund and if the workers worked in any small economic unit the fund would be formed by the contribution of workers, owners and the welfare fund, Shipar said.
‘We will sign a Memorandum of Understanding with post office so that workers can open accounts for provident fund in any branch of post office across the country. After getting application for opening provident fund account the post office would inform the ministry and then we will scrutinize the applications for approval,’ he said.
According to the ministry officials, initially the informal sector workers’ monthly deposit would be Tk 100 and the government will also contribute the same amount to the workers account from the workers welfare foundation.
The tenure of the provident fund would be 5-25 years and worker would not get the government contribution if he or she fails to continue the fund for less than five years.
After the maturity of the tenure, informal sector workers would get total amount of money contributed by workers, owners and foundation with the interest offered by the savings institute and additional 10 per cent interest on total deposit from the foundation.
All the transactions of the account would be carried out under electric system with postal cash card and the workers would not make any transaction through the card in first five years.
Some benefits would be included in the rules for the workers who will join the provident fund.
In case of permanent disability or death of workers, his or her nominee would get Tk 2 lakh, for any fatal disease worker would get Tk 1 lakh and female workers would get maternity benefits from the WWF.
Source: New Age
