Hostel Facility Scheme (HPBOCWWB)

What is the HPBOCWWB Hostel Facility Scheme?

Hostel Facility Scheme is an education-support scheme of the Himachal Pradesh Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (HPBOCWWB), the statutory welfare board created under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996. The board sits under the Labour and Employment Department of the Government of Himachal Pradesh and is financed by the 1 per cent construction cess collected on building works in the state.

According to the board's portal at bocw.hp.gov.in, the scheme provides Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 every year towards aavas, boarding tatha bhojan, accommodation, boarding and food, for the children of registered beneficiaries who live in a hostel while studying. The problem it addresses is specific to Himachal Pradesh: a construction worker's family in a hill district often lives far from the nearest higher secondary school, degree college or ITI, so a child who wants to continue studying has to board away from home, and the hostel cost is frequently what stops them.

Hostel Facility Scheme is one of a package of roughly a dozen benefits the board runs for the same registered worker: education assistance, medical assistance, marriage assistance, maternity benefit, pension, disability pension, death benefit and housing support among them. All of them share one gateway: the worker's own registration with the board.

Who is eligible for the hostel facility assistance?

The following can claim:

• Children of a construction worker registered with the HPBOCWWB whose membership is live on the date of claim.
• Up to two children per registered worker, the same ceiling the board applies across its family benefits.
• Students who are actually residing in a hostel while pursuing regular study, with a hostel certificate or hostel fee receipt to prove it.
• Children recorded as family members on the parent's board registration. The portal carries an "Add Family Member" service for exactly this purpose, and a child who is not on the record cannot be attached to a claim.

The following are not eligible and cannot apply:

• Children of construction labourers who are not registered with the board. There is no route for an unregistered worker to claim any board benefit.
• Children of workers whose registration has lapsed because the three-yearly contribution or the Rs 15 renewal was not paid.
• Day scholars living at home. The scheme reimburses the cost of boarding away from home, so a student who does not live in a hostel has no claim.
• A third or subsequent child, once two children of the same registered worker have been covered.
• Children of supervisory, clerical, managerial or technical staff employed by a construction firm, since those categories are excluded from registration as building workers under the Act.
• Workers registered with another state's construction welfare board, who must claim from that board.

The registration conditions behind all of this are set out on the board's portal: a construction worker must be aged between 18 and 60 years and must have worked as a building or other construction worker for at least 90 days in the preceding 12 months, on private construction, government works or panchayat works. Registration costs Rs 1, the three-year contribution is Rs 9, and renewal for the next three years is Rs 15.

How much is paid, and how does it sit alongside the other education benefits?

Hostel Facility Scheme and the education assistance slabs are separate schemes. A student boarding at a college hostel while pursuing a degree can be supported under both; education assistance of Rs 36,000 for the graduation course and hostel assistance of Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 for the year of hostel residence — provided each is claimed on its own application with its own supporting papers. Families frequently claim only one of the two because they assume a single "education" benefit exists.

Payment is made by bank transfer. The board does not pay the hostel directly, so the family should expect to pay the hostel and be reimbursed rather than have the bill settled at source.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the HPBOCWWB hostel facility online

1. Open the board portal at bocw.hp.gov.in.
2. Confirm first that the child is listed on your record using the Add Family Member service. A claim for a child who is not on the family record will fail at scrutiny.
3. Select Apply for Benefits from the online services menu.
4. Choose the Hostel Facility scheme from the list of board schemes.
5. Enter the registered worker's beneficiary ID and date of birth and click Search. If the beneficiary ID is not known, use the portal's Find Beneficiary ID service.
6. Fill in the student's details, name, institution, class or course, and the hostel where the student resides.
7. Upload the hostel certificate, the bonafide student certificate, the student's Aadhaar and the bank passbook.
8. Click Submit Application and note down the application number.
9. Track the claim later using the portal's Check Application Status service.

How to apply offline

1. Visit the district Labour Officer or Labour Welfare Office in your district with your HPBOCWWB registration card.
2. Ask for the claim form for the hostel facility scheme and fill it in.
3. Attach the hostel certificate, bonafide certificate, student's Aadhaar, bank passbook and, where asked, the previous year's marksheet.
4. Submit the form and collect a dated acknowledgement or diary number.
5. Follow up at the same office quoting the diary number.

The board's own office is at Old SDM Office, Hamirpur 177001, telephone 01972-222411, email hpbocwwboard@gmail.com.

How do I check my application status?

The board portal carries a Check Application Status service. Enter the application number given at submission, or the worker's beneficiary ID, to see whether the file is pending, has been returned for want of documents, or is sanctioned. The board also runs an Aadhaar Verification service and an Upload Continuity Certificate service; both are worth completing proactively because an unverified Aadhaar or a missing continuity certificate is a common cause of a stalled file. The board's dashboard, last updated 4 August 2026, records 1,91,608 applications received across all its schemes and 76,215 approved, with 23,970 approved cases Aadhaar-verified.

Why do hostel facility claims get rejected?

• Registration lapsed. The Rs 15 three-yearly renewal was not paid, so the membership was inactive when the claim was filed.
• Child not added as a family member on the parent's board record.
• No hostel certificate, or a certificate that does not state that the student actually resides in the hostel.
• Two-child ceiling already used by earlier claims from the same worker.
• Continuity certificate not uploaded, so the board cannot confirm the parent is still working as a construction worker.
• Aadhaar not verified on the beneficiary record.
• Bank details wrong, causing the transfer to fail even after sanction.

Each of these is curable. A returned claim can be refiled with the missing paper through the same portal or district office at no cost.

When should I apply?

Hostel Facility Scheme has no fixed last date announced; the board accepts benefit applications through the year. In practice the claim follows the academic session, because the hostel certificate and fee receipt for that session are what support it, so the sensible time to apply is soon after the child takes admission and pays the hostel fee. The dates that genuinely matter are the parent's own registration and renewal dates.

Help and grievance redressal

• HPBOCWWB office: Old SDM Office, Hamirpur 177001
• Telephone: 01972-222411
• Email: hpbocwwboard@gmail.com
• Portal: bocw.hp.gov.in
• District route: the district Labour Officer, who scrutinises and forwards claims

Registration and claim filing are free of agent charges. No contractor, middleman or official is authorised to charge a construction worker a fee for registering or for filing a hostel claim, and no board official will ask for an OTP or a bank password.

A note on what the board publishes

The board's public pages state the hostel benefit as a band of Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 a year for up to two children, but they do not publish the classes or courses that qualify, an age ceiling for the student, or a formal limitation period for filing. Those details are applied at district level. Rather than rely on a figure quoted by a third-party website, a family should confirm the current rate and the qualifying courses with the district Labour Officer or the board office in Hamirpur before submitting.