The Yogi government will provide Rs 12,000 each to a selected number of labourers, employed in close to 6.5 lakh commercial establishments and 20,500 factories and workshops in Uttar Pradesh, to undertake religious travel said officials.
The process would begin from January 24, the state’s foundation day, when the state’s labour welfare board would invite applications from nearly 1.5cr labourers, enrolled with the board, to avail the benefit under Swami Vivekananda Etihasik Paryatan Yatra Yojana.
“For travel, the board has identified places like religious cities of Ayodhya, Mathura, Prayagraj and Varanasi, along with Hastinapur in Meerut, Gorakhnath temple in Gorakhpur, the temples of Shakumbhari Devi and Vindhyavasini Devi. We will also allow travel to Agra. Apart from these, there would be some more places for which the beneficiaries would have to make an application,” said Sunil Bharala, the board chairman who has a minister of state rank.
The scheme was conceptualised on November 10— the birth anniversary of Dattopant Thengadi, the RSS ideologue, who founded the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a trade union organisation, which acts as a pressure group to enforce pro-labour policies.
“We have decided to transfer Rs 12,000 each, directly into the accounts of the beneficiaries, who get selected,” Bharala said. He said the scheme named after Swami Vivekananda would be the first-of-its-kind and was aimed at ensuring that labourers not only get time off from their daily grind but were also able to acquaint themselves with the country’s rich cultural and religious heritage.
“To my mind, there is no such scheme anywhere that funds religious travel of labourers,” Bharala added. The board has written to lawmakers across the state seeking their help in popularising this scheme among labourers.
“This scheme is of course unique but we have several other initiatives going for the labourers,” Bharala said adding that they were seeking help of MPs and MLAs to popularise them.
“We have a scheme for marriage of daughters of labourers, named after social reformer and Dalit icon Jyotiba Phule. There is another scheme named after former President APJ Abdul Kalam aimed at helping labourers’ children pursue technical education, an incentive scheme named after freedom fighter and journalist Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, financial compensation for kin of labourers named after Raja Harishchandra. There is another scheme to provide financial assistance for completing the last rites of labourers that is named after Dattopant Thengadi,” he said.
From 2021, the labour department would launch three more schemes—the religious travel one named after Swami Vivekananda, another one to encourage sporting activities among labourers, named after former India cricketer and UP minister the late Chetan Chauhan and a scheme to help the poor purchase books, named after famous litterateur Mahadevi Verma.
By Hindustan Times
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