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The Ministry of Labour & Employment, with the Government of Maharashtra, is holding a National Conference on Building and Other Construction Workers in Mumbai on 11-12 September 2026, chaired by Union Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya.
Nine States/UTs - Maharashtra, Telangana, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha - will launch their State BOCW Digital Labour Chowk.
Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal will inaugurate the Online BOCW Cess Collection Portal; Bihar and West Bengal will launch Labour Chowk-cum-Facilitation Centres.
All three initiatives were first launched at the National Labour Conference in New Delhi in November 2025, and the Mumbai meeting reviews their rollout.
Replace the physical street-corner labour chowk with a digital job-matching platform so construction workers can find employment without waiting at roadside hiring points.
Key: Launched by the Ministry of Labour & Employment at the National Labour Conference in November 2025 as a multilingual worker-employer matching app; nine States/UTs roll out their own versions at Mumbai.
Give construction workers a physical point that combines a hiring location with a service desk for welfare-scheme access.
Key: Bihar and West Bengal launch their centres at the Mumbai conference; the model pairs employment facilitation with registration and benefit delivery in one place.
Digitise collection and monitoring of the construction cess so that State Welfare Boards receive their dues transparently.
Key: Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal inaugurate their portals; the cess is levied at 1% of the cost of construction and finances the State BOCW Welfare Boards.
Create the National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW), seeded with Aadhaar, to route social security to unorganised workers including construction workers.
Key: Launched 26 August 2021 by the Ministry of Labour & Employment; registration is on self-declaration across about 400 occupations in 30 broad sectors, and it is the database against which construction-worker welfare is increasingly targeted.
The parent law on employment, safety and service conditions of construction workers. It requires every State to constitute a State BOCW Welfare Board (Section 22) to register beneficiaries and run welfare schemes.
Provides for levy and collection of a cess on the cost of construction to fund the Welfare Boards. The Act allows a rate between 1% and 2%; the Centre has notified 1%. This is the revenue stream the new Online Cess Collection Portal digitises.
One of the four labour codes; it subsumes nine earlier laws including the BOCW Welfare Cess Act, 1996 and the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008. The four labour codes came into force on 21 November 2025, placing construction-worker cess and welfare within the Code's framework.
BOCW Welfare Boards, e-Shram and the Code on Social Security are three layers of one problem - identifying the worker, funding the benefit, paying it.
Cess is collected by States and held by State Welfare Boards, so the Centre's lever is coordination and digital infrastructure, not direct spending.
Code on Wages 2019, Industrial Relations Code 2020, Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 and Code on Social Security 2020, all effective 21 November 2025.
GS Paper 2 > Social Justice > Welfare Schemes for Vulnerable Sections
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Acts
'Recognition of Prior Learning Scheme' is sometimes mentioned in the news with reference to
Answer: Certifying the skills acquired by construction workers through traditional channels.
State-level body constituted under the BOCW Act, 1996 to register construction workers and run welfare schemes financed by the construction cess.
Ministry of Labour & Employment platform digitising the traditional roadside hiring point for construction workers, launched November 2025.
Levy on the cost of construction under the BOCW Welfare Cess Act, 1996, notified at 1% of construction cost.