Scheme for Relief to the Un-registered Workers (Andhra Pradesh)

What is the Scheme for Relief to the Un-registered Workers?

The Scheme for Relief to the Un-registered Workers is a welfare measure of the Andhra Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board, which functions under the state Labour Department. The scheme pays Rs 50,000 to the dependants of a construction worker who dies in an accident at a work site but who had never been registered as a beneficiary of the Board.

The scheme fills a specific and very real gap. Under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, every state constitutes a welfare board funded by a cess collected on the cost of construction. A worker becomes entitled to the Board's benefits, accident compensation, medical assistance, maternity benefit, children's education assistance, marriage assistance and pension: only after registering as a beneficiary. Registration requires the worker to be between 18 and 60 years of age and to have worked for at least 90 days in a building or other construction work in the preceding twelve months.

In practice, a large part of the construction workforce never registers. Daily-wage labour moves between contractors, migrant workers arrive for a single project, and a worker who is paid in cash at the end of the day rarely has a reason to visit a labour office. When such a worker falls from a scaffold, is struck by material or is caught in a trench collapse, the family finds that the Board's normal death benefit is closed to them for a paperwork reason. This scheme is the answer to that: a fixed Rs 50,000 relief that does not require prior registration.

What the relief is, and what it is not

• The relief is a one-time lump sum, not a monthly pension.
• The amount is fixed at Rs 50,000 regardless of the worker's wage or age.
• The trigger is death in an accident at a work site, not death from any cause.
• It is separate from any compensation payable by the employer under the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923, and separate from any police or district administration ex-gratia. Families should pursue those claims independently.

Who is eligible for relief under this scheme?

Dependants can claim if:

• The deceased was working as a building or other construction worker in Andhra Pradesh: mason, helper, carpenter, bar bender, plumber, electrician, painter, welder, road or canal worker, or similar site labour.
• The death was caused by an accident at the work site.
• The deceased was not registered as a beneficiary of the Andhra Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board.
• The claimant is a dependant of the deceased — ordinarily the spouse, children or dependent parents.
• The family is resident in Andhra Pradesh and the accident occurred there.

You cannot apply, or are not eligible, if:

• The deceased was already registered with the Welfare Board. That family must claim the Board's regular accidental death benefit, which is a substantially larger amount, rather than this relief. Filing under the wrong head only delays the claim.
• The death was from illness or natural causes, or from an accident that had nothing to do with the work site, for example a road accident on a day off.
• The deceased was not a construction worker. Other categories of unorganised worker are covered by different state schemes and by the state's insurance arrangements for unorganised labour, not by the construction workers' Board.
• The claimant is not a dependant of the deceased. A neighbour, employer or union office-bearer may help with the paperwork but cannot receive the money.
• The same death has already been compensated by the Board under another head.

What documents are required?

How to apply for relief for an unregistered construction worker

The claim is filed offline. No dedicated online portal has been notified for this relief, so a family should not wait for one or pay an agent who claims to file it online.

1. Make sure the accident is on the police record. Ask the police station with jurisdiction over the site to register the accidental death and complete the inquest, and obtain a copy of the FIR or inquest report. Without this, the claim has no independent evidence that the death was accidental.
2. Obtain the post-mortem report and the death certificate. The post-mortem report comes from the government hospital that conducted it; the death certificate from the municipality, panchayat or registrar of births and deaths.
3. Get written proof that the deceased was a construction worker. Ask the contractor or builder for a certificate on letterhead, and take a copy of the muster roll or wage register entry if one exists. If the employer will not cooperate, ask the Grama or Ward Sachivalayam or the local labour inspector to certify the worker's occupation.
4. Collect the relationship and identity papers, family member certificate or legal heir certificate, ration card, the claimant's Aadhaar, and a bank passbook in the claimant's own name with Aadhaar seeding done.
5. Go to the district Labour Office and ask for the application form for relief to un-registered workers under the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board. The Assistant Commissioner of Labour or the Labour Officer for the district is the receiving authority.
6. Submit the completed form with all enclosures and take a written acknowledgement carrying a reference or file number.
7. Follow up on the enquiry. A labour officer verifies the accident, the site and the worker's status. Be available for that enquiry, since an unanswered verification is a frequent cause of a file simply sitting.
8. Confirm the sanction and the credit. The relief is released to the dependant's Aadhaar-seeded account, so check the passbook once the office reports sanction.

How to check the status of a claim

1. Return to the district Labour Office with the acknowledgement number. The office holds the file and can say whether the enquiry, sanction or payment stage is pending.
2. Ask the Assistant Commissioner of Labour for the district where the local office cannot trace the file.
3. Check the claimant's bank passbook, because the credit is often the first confirmation a family receives.
4. Use the Grama or Ward Sachivalayam as a local point of help if travel to the district headquarters is difficult; the secretariat staff can pursue the file on the family's behalf.

Why these claims get rejected

• No proof of construction work. This is by far the largest reason. Cash-paid site labour leaves no paper trail, so a contractor or Sachivalayam certificate must be arranged early.
• No FIR or inquest, so the death cannot be established as accidental.
• Post-mortem not conducted, which leaves the cause of death open.
• The accident did not occur at the work site. A commuting accident or a domestic accident falls outside the scheme.
• The worker was in fact registered with the Board, in which case the claim belongs under the regular death benefit.
• Claimant is not the dependant on record, or two family members have filed competing claims without a legal heir certificate.
• Bank account not Aadhaar-seeded, which stops payment after sanction.

Where do I complain or escalate?

Escalate first to the Assistant Commissioner of Labour for the district, then to the Deputy Commissioner of Labour for the zone, and finally to the Commissioner of Labour, Government of Andhra Pradesh, whose department site is at labour.ap.gov.in. Registered construction workers' unions in Andhra Pradesh routinely assist families with these files and can be a practical source of help in assembling employer evidence.

No fee is payable at any stage of this claim. No official, contractor or agent is entitled to a share of the Rs 50,000, and any demand for one should be reported to the district Labour Officer.

A final point worth acting on rather than reading past: registration with the Welfare Board is free and open to any construction worker aged 18 to 60 with 90 days of construction work in the previous year. A worker who registers moves from this Rs 50,000 relief into the Board's full benefit package, which covers accidental death at a far higher rate along with medical, education, marriage and pension benefits. Registration is done at the district Labour Office or through the Grama or Ward Sachivalayam, and it is the single most useful thing a construction worker's family can do before an accident rather than after one.