Nearly 1 lakh bogus labour cards detected in crackdown

Nearly one lakh 'Karmika Cards' for the welfare of construction workers were issued to ineligible persons in the last three years, leading to possible leakage of crores of public money, a drive taken up by the Labour Department has revealed.

The department, which is in the process of cracking down on bogus cards, has so far identified 90,091 such cards issued between 2020 and 2023. A majority of them with white-collared jobs and paying taxes were found in possession of the cards, availing social security benefits meant for construction workers. 

The 'Karmika Card' allows a registered worker with the Karnataka Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board, to avail social security schemes covering health, pension, education of children and marriage.

Though the rules mandate that a person should have worked for 90 days in a year as a construction worker and should not be a tax payer, several people in the tax bracket have also availed these cards in a bogus manner, labour officials said. 

According to labour department data, there are 32.77 lakh construction workers registered with the department. The Board has a corpus of Rs 6,221 crore. This is the money collected through a 1% cess levied on builders.

While there is no official estimate of the amount lost to bogus cards, data shows that the government has spent Rs 4,824 crore of workers' cess in the last three years for welfare schemes.

Principal Secretary (Labour) Mohammed Mohsin told DH that the problem had exacerbated during and post Covid where several people applied for the cards to avail government benefits through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). The department estimated the number of bogus cards to be far more than what was identified at present.

Officials have taken up a drive to seize such cards and criminal cases will be slapped where necessary, he said. 

Bidar (26,545) and Hubballi (25,714) have the highest bogus cards, data shows. 

P P Appanna, state president of Karnataka Pragathipara Kattada Karmikara Sangha, blamed the officials for issuing cards in bulk during Covid to ineligible people.

"The government announced ration kits to families during Covid and channelised money through various sources. To source money through the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board, they registered people randomly as construction workers and issued cards," he alleged. 

He also said that those deserving were kept away as they were unable to produce all the required documents. For instance, the government insists on employment certificate from a builder authorised by BAI, CREDAI or Karnataka State Contractors Association.

"In several cases, a person would have worked for 3-4 days at a site. Who will give them them employment certificate?" he sought to know.