The Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) said that in the highly labour-intensive textile sector, rigid labour laws have been a major hindrance to investments and scaling up of production facilities.
Prem Malik, Chairman, CITI said, “The labour reforms programme ‘Shramev Jayate’, coupled with the “Make in India” programme announced earlier will be of immense help to the textiles sector.”
He added, “The textile sector has huge potential for growth in the country and further opportunities are opening up in both domestic and global markets.”
Another trade body - ASSOCHAM complimented the Government for initiating labour law reforms by saying that, it will create conducive environment for growth of trade and Industry, as well bring transparency in social security benefits for workers.
“The simplification of procedures and introduction of unified web portal to insure compliance of labour laws is a welcome move which will avoid harassment at the hands of inspectors,” D S Rawat Secretary General at ASSOCHAM said.
“The universal PF account number to the employees satisfies their long standing demand and enables quick transfer as well viewing their account statement anywhere anytime,” he informed.
Prem Malik specifically welcomed the move to provide workers with a portable PF membership and to control ‘Inspector Raj’ by stipulating norms for inspection of factories.
He stated that labour reforms would encourage investments in large factories and scaling up of production facilities would help in achieving economies of scale as well as in meeting the increasing demand for high volume products from importers.
Prem Malik added that it is clear that the government is seriously looking at the need for an industry-friendly and worker-friendly labour regime.
ASSOCHAM too feels the measures clearly signal that doing business in India is not so difficult. “The production and productivity can be improved and the measures are employability friendly, competency friendly and business environment friendly,” it said.
“The programme has simplified erstwhile complicated and frustrating provisions of collecting similar information by various departments separately. The laws are to be complied but simplification of procedures avoids harassment,” said Rawat.
