DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR 261
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Oh, yes. I exercise control, because the secretary of the Labour Department is the Chairman. The budget comes to us for purposes of consideration. When it is passed, it is sent back and referred to the committee for further amendment.
With regard to the question of the Labour Commissioner, I think my friend Professor Ranga will know that all Provincial Governments have got Labour Commissioners. Under them, they have their own conciliation officers and other officers looking after labour. It was felt in the Government of India that as the Government of India has also got certain undertakings for which it is responsible, it was desirable that the Government of India should also have a similar organisation under its control to look after the welfare of workers engaged in these Central undertakings and consequently quite recently we have established this organisation. At the head of the organisation is an officer called the Chief Labour Commissioner with the Government of India. The rest of India is divided into three different areas and for each area there will be one Deputy Labour Commissioner. Prof. Ranga, I think, would like to know that we have taken advantage of this new organisation in order to amalgamate the work of Central undertakings along with the work which was originally done separately by the Conciliation Officer (Railways) and the Supervisor of Railway labour. All this has now beeen amalgamated and centralised. The Labour Welfare Officers who were working individually in different areas and were reporting directly to the Government of India will now be under these different Labour Commissioners. Similarly, the Railway Inspectors who were also working separately under the Railway Conciliation Officer and doing the work of checking up the Payment of Wages Act and the hours of labour are also now being brought under the new scheme and we have made a consolidated scheme.
With regard to the point relating to the Labour Investigation Committee, I think it will be recalled that last year or rather the year before that in 1943, the Tripartite Labour Conference passed a resolution that the Government of India should undertake social security measures on the lines of the Beveridge report. It was then felt that before any such scheme could be formulated, it would be necessary to have a fact finding committee which would investigate all questions, such as housing, wages, sanitary conditions