Leave Travel Concession (LTC) Scheme for Registered Construction Workers, Punjab

The Leave Travel Concession Scheme, listed as Welfare Scheme No. 5 by the Punjab Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board, is a small but genuinely useful cash benefit for registered construction workers in Punjab. The Board is a statutory body of the Department of Labour, Government of Punjab, constituted under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, and its welfare schemes are approved under Rule 265 of the Punjab Building and Other Construction Workers Rules, 2008. Workers usually refer to the benefit simply as LTC or the labour-card travel allowance; the Board's own title is Leave Travelling Concession for registered construction workers.

What does the Punjab BOCW LTC scheme give?

The Punjab BOCW Board gives Rs 2,000 as leave travel concession to a registered construction worker. The Board's compendium of welfare schemes states the amount plainly and attaches four conditions to it: the journey must be to a religious or historical place in India or to the worker's home town; the benefit is available once after every two years; it is paid after the return from the journey against a self-declaration or proof submitted online; and no compensation is payable for any incident that occurs during the journey.

Rs 2,000 will not fund a long holiday, and the scheme is not meant to. For a migrant construction worker in Ludhiana, Mohali or Amritsar whose family lives in another district or another state, the amount is roughly the cost of a return bus or sleeper-class rail trip home, which is exactly what the Board designed it to cover. It sits alongside the Board's larger benefits: pension, stipend, maternity benefit, ex-gratia, medical reimbursement — as one of the low-friction claims a worker can make in a year when nothing else has gone wrong.

Who is eligible for LTC under the Punjab BOCW Board?

The conditions published by the Board are:

• The claimant must be a construction worker registered as a beneficiary with the Punjab Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board.
• The worker must be depositing contribution regularly; the Board applies this membership condition across its welfare schemes.
• The journey must be to a religious or historical place in India, or to the worker's home town.
• Two years must have passed since the last LTC claim, since the benefit is available after every two years.
• The journey must already be complete when the claim is filed.

Registration is the gateway to all of this. Under the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, a construction worker can register as a beneficiary if he or she is aged between 18 and 60 years and has worked in building or other construction work for at least 90 days in the preceding twelve months. Punjab's Labour Department runs registration, renewal and status-checking online at pblabour.gov.in under "BOCW Registration".

Who cannot apply: construction workers who have never registered with the Board, and workers whose registration has lapsed for non-payment of contribution, are not eligible until they register or renew. A registered beneficiary who is already receiving an LTC benefit under a similar scheme from any other government department is not eligible for the Board's LTC, the scheme text bars double-dipping specifically on this benefit, which is different from the Board's stipend and Shagun schemes where a parallel benefit from another Punjab government department is expressly allowed. Family members of a registered worker cannot claim the LTC in their own name; the benefit is written for the registered construction worker. Workers who have claimed within the last two years also cannot claim again inside that window.

How to apply for the Punjab BOCW LTC benefit

1. Check that your registration is live before you travel. Log in at pblabour.gov.in, open "BOCW Registration", and renew if the card has expired or contribution is outstanding. A lapsed card is the most common reason an LTC claim is refused, and it is far easier to fix before the journey than after.
2. Make the journey and keep every ticket. Travel to your home town or to a religious or historical place in India. Keep bus or rail tickets, booking receipts and any lodging receipt; they are the practical support for the declaration you will file.
3. File the claim online after you return. The Board accepts the LTC claim on its web portal, submitted either through the Labour Inspector or Labour Enforcement Officer of your area, or through the nearest Suvidha Kendra. You submit a self-declaration of the journey along with proof, and upload your registration details, Aadhaar and bank passbook.
4. Let the file move through verification. As with the Board's other welfare schemes, the claim is verified by the committee constituted at sub-divisional level, and the concerned officer obtains approval from the Deputy Commissioner.
5. Receive Rs 2,000 by DBT. After approval, the sanctioned list goes to the Board, which transfers the amount directly into the worker's bank account. No cash is handed out at the counter.

How do I check my LTC claim status?

The e-Labour Punjab portal at pblabour.gov.in carries a "Click here to check your application status" link on the BOCW Registration page and a separate "Check Your Labour Welfare Board Scheme Status" link on the home page. Use the application number issued when the claim was filed, or the beneficiary registration number printed on the labour card. Because the file passes through a sub-divisional committee and then the Deputy Commissioner's office, a claim can legitimately sit for a few weeks; the area Labour Inspector or Labour Enforcement Officer can identify which desk it is on.

Why are LTC claims rejected, and how do you fix them?

• Registration lapsed or contribution not deposited. Renew online and re-file. The Board's conditions require current membership.
• Claim filed inside the two-year cycle. Nothing can be done except wait; the Board's condition of one benefit every two years is absolute.
• No proof of the journey. A bare declaration with no ticket, receipt or corroboration is easy for the verifying committee to doubt. Attach whatever you kept.
• Journey outside the covered purposes. Travel that is not to a home town and not to a religious or historical place in India falls outside the scheme.
• Parallel LTC from another department. If the worker or the family already draws travel concession from another government scheme, the Board's LTC is barred.
• Bank details mismatch. A name or IFSC mismatch stops the DBT even after sanction; correct it with the Labour Inspector rather than filing a fresh claim.

What else can a registered construction worker claim in Punjab?

The Board runs about twenty welfare schemes, and workers who qualify for LTC almost always qualify for others. Registered beneficiaries and their families get up to Rs 50,000 of free indoor treatment per family per year under the Bhagat Puran Singh Sehat Bima Yojna, with Rs 5 lakh insurance cover for accidental death or 100% disability. The Board's ex-gratia scheme pays Rs 4 lakh for accidental death, Rs 3 lakh for natural death and Rs 4 lakh for 100% disability, with Rs 4,000 for each one per cent of partial disability. Education stipends run from Rs 3,000 to Rs 70,000 a year for children of registered workers. The Shagun Scheme assists the marriage of up to two daughters, the Balri Birth Gift Scheme creates a Rs 51,000 fixed deposit on the birth of a daughter, the funeral assistance scheme pays Rs 20,000, and the pension scheme pays Rs 2,000 a month after 60 years of age with three years of membership. A tool kit grant of up to Rs 5,000 is available once every three years to workers who have completed training under the Board's skill upgradation or Recognition of Prior Learning scheme.

Key dates and where to complain

No fixed last date is published for LTC, so the operative timing rule is simply that the claim follows the journey and that two years must separate one claim from the next. If a claim is rejected or stalls, take it up with the Assistant Labour Commissioner or Labour-cum-Conciliation Officer of your district first; the Board's scheme rules place final appellate authority with the Secretary of the Board, and in the pension scheme an appeal to the Secretary must be filed within 60 days of rejection, with delays up to one year condonable for satisfactory reasons. The Labour Department's helpline numbers are 0172-2920755 and 0172-2925755, available Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and the technical helpdesk email is elabourhelpdesk@gmail.com. The head office is Labour Bhawan, Model Welfare Centre, Phase 10, Sector 64, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar (Mohali), Punjab 160062.