New Delhi: The Centre has started work to create a national database and Aadhaar-seeded identification number system to facilitate welfare delivery to 40 crore workers in the unorganized sector, according to The Hindu.
Ministry of Labour has called for tenders to design, develop and run the new Unorganised Workers Identification Number (UWIN) Platform.
Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State for Labour and Employment had in December 2017 told the Rajya Sabha that the project would have an estimated cost of Rs 402.7 crore.
The UWIN platform will be set up within six months of the contract being signed, and a third of the workers are expected to be registered in the first year, with the remainder to be registered in the second year.
The Centre, through service providers, will create and maintain the platform and states will identify and register unorganised workers.
The Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011 will be used as the base for the platform, and other worker databases.
Although the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the legitimacy of making Aadhaar mandatory for entitlements, the entire UWIN platform is built around Aadhaar.
Those who have enrolled for Aadhaar but have failed to receive it can provisionally enroll themselves into the UWIN system with their Aadhaar Enrollment ID. However, it is only when they are able to link Aadhaar with their dataset at a later stage that they will actually be assigned a UWIN number.
The only exception provided is for “areas that do not have any Aadhaar coverage” which must be approved by the Labour Ministry, where other government identity documents will be allowed, with an option of linking Aadhaar at a later stage.
On being asked if Aadhaar will be mandatory for UWIN, a senior Labour Ministry official told The Hindu it would be the responsibility of the states to get Aadhaar made for all workers.
Comments
0 comment