India to enact new labour laws soon to spur investment: Narendra Singh Tomar

MELBOURNE: India today said it was bringing comprehensive chages in labour laws to facilitate investment and entrepreneurship, including drafting a single law for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises ( MSME).

"We are amending our labour laws in order to encourage investment, ease of doing business and entrepreneurship. Amendments have also been proposed to enhance safety at workplace and working conditions especially for women," Labour Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said.

He was addressing the Labour and employment Ministerial conference of G-20 nations here.

"Use of Personal Protective Equipment has been made mandatory for hazardous industries. Amendment in legislation has also been proposed to allow night work for women. This would promote participation of women in labour force."

The ministry was concurrently working on minimum age of employment and to provide a mandatory national floor level of minimum wages apart from drafting a single law for MSME to increase formalisation.

"We are also working on Minimum age of employment and to provide a mandatory national floor level of minimum wages. We are also in process to draft a single law for MSME to increase formalisation," he added.

The labour ministers of the World's major 20 economies are discussing the global issues relating to labour during the two-day conference.

The minister said that India has a healthy tradition of tripartism and is committed to achieve targets of progress and growth with cooperation of all stakeholders.

Stating that industry and commerce had maximum potential of employment, Tomar said that employers have a big role to play to address the concern of jobless growth.

Tomar said that a large informal sector, lower participation of women in labour force, increasing the productivity of labour and providing social protection to the vulnerable sections were the main challenges.