Now, an app to track labour law violations

Factories using child labour beware, there is now an App that can be used by inspectors to click pictures of any violation of law on the premises, upload it and report it to the authorities concerned.

The App, called LISA, developed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and US Department of Labour, is already being used by about 400 ILO-trained labour inspectors in neighbouring Sri Lanka.

According to an online ILO report, the use of the App in Sri Lanka since 2013 has proven that technology can play a big role in keeping tabs on labour law violations.

Also, it has made life easier for inspectors, who earlier had to manually fill piles of forms, compile the responses and file a final report. Both employers and employees in Sri Lanka are happy with the technology, claims ILO.

In India, the Narendra Modi government has assured an inspector raj-free industrial climate to ease doing business by allowing random online selection of premises and online filing of reports by inspectors.

While Indian employers, who cited harassment by inspectors as a key impediment to doing business, are a happy lot, trade unions are sceptical about its effectiveness in dealing with labour law violations. When asked if an App like LISA can work in India, a trade unionist said technology can be a useful tool for tracking violations provided it is in the right hands.

Also, while the use of LISA may cut down paper work in India, the existence of multiple labour laws, the number of workers and the geographical spread of the country poses a big challenge.

When asked, K Shyam Sundar, a faculty member at the Xavier’s Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur, said “while technology will lead to improvement in and transparency of the inspection system, there are two pre-conditions – an attitudinal restructuring and the financial ability of India. Also, the size of the States can be daunting.”

In India, the number of inspections in the much smaller Central sphere (defence, banking, railways etc) is already on the decline.

For instance, the number of inspections under the Contract Labour Regulation Act fell to 6,990 with 4,084 prosecutions launched in 2013-14, against 8,146 inspections and 4,671 prosecutions in 2012-13, according to Labour Ministry data.

Child labour inspections in 2013-14, too, fell to 1,380 from 2,421 in 2012-13.