Road Ministry to tell contractors to transfer salaries in banks

NEW DELHI: In a step to encourage cashless payments in unorganised construction sector, the road transport and highways ministry has decided to ask all its concessionaires, contractors and toll plaza operators to pay their workforce and labourers directly into their bank accounts. The ministry is likely to issue a directive soon.

Currently, payments to labourers and workers employed in the road construction sector — one of the largest employers of unorganised labour in the country — are made through cash.

“There’s a huge workforce employed by the road construction companies and contractors. Getting these people into the banking net will give a push to the Prime Minister’s plan to ensure most financial transactions are made through bank accounts, instead of cash,” an official said.

The NDA government has been pushing for cashless transactions in the country since it recalled Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8.

The two road constructing arms of the road ministry — the National highways Authority of India and the National Highways and Industrial Development Corporation — will also issue instructions to make all payments cashless to vendors and the workforce.

The road ministry, which does not have the exact number of people directly or indirectly employed in the sector, has a huge road construction outlay which for the current year is estimated to be over Rs 1 lakh crore.

Incidentally, the railways ministry has also said all payment to its vendors and labourers in the construction of rail infrastructure will be cashless from now on.labourers in the construction of rail infrastructure will be cashless from now on.

The railway ministry is also installing 15,000 point of sales machine so that tickets could be bought through debit and credit cards.