29. संकीर्ण विभाग

* Miscellaneous Departments Mr. President (The Honourable Sir Abdur Rahim): The House will not take up Demand No. 64 : Miscellaneous Departments, which was left over.

The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Sir, I think my Honourable friend, Mr. Avinashilingam Chettiar, wanted to know how the sum of Rs. 15,26,000 which finds a place here has not been mentioned in the Standing Finance Committee report. I have referred to the Report and I find that what he says is correct. I have sent for information from the Department to find out exactly what items this sum entered here represents. In the meantime if the Honourable Member wants some general information as to the matter with which this supplementary grant is concerned, I am quite prepared to give it to him.

Mr. T. S. Avinashillingam Chettiar : All this information is given in the Memorandum.

The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: The scheme of employment exchanges has been fully explained in the report of the Standing Finance Committee.

Mr. T. S. Avinashillingam Chettiar : What we want is explanation for the figures.

The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : With regard to the bigger item, briefly the facts are these. As Honourable Members know, there has been a great deal of competition for unskilled labour by different contractors working for Government in the civil departments as well as those working for the military department. In order to remove the causes of this competition which has the result of enticing away essential labour from important fields of work, and which has also the consequence of raising the wages of labour beyond reasonable limits, Government thought it necessary to establish certain

* Legislative Assembly Debates (Central), Vol. III, 29th March 1944, p. 1720.

Committees in order to deal with this problem. What the Government has done is to bring into operation two different schemes, one scheme is called Labour Supply Committee scheme, which operates in certain Provinces such as Bengal, Assam which are very closely situated with military operations. The second thing which the Government has done is to raise what are called depots of labour, and one particular depot is the depot which has been established at Gorakhpur. Most of the unskilled labour is collected and sorted out and supplied either to coal mines or to military works. The expenditure which is mentioned under ‘M’—Labour co-ordination of unskilled scheme—is really expenditure which is concerned under these two schemes which I have mentioned. That is all I have to say. Mr. N. M. Joshi (Nominated Non-Official): Sir, the Honourable Member has told us about his two schemes, one is the Labour Supply Committee and the second is the scheme of arranging for depots for supplying labour and sending them for different purposes to other places. Now, Sir, as regards this Labour Supply Committee, I would like the Honourable Member to tell us whether there are any representatives of labour on these Committees wherever these Committees are started. The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I might just mention that I only passed orders yesterday for the representation of labour on these Labour Supply Committee.

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