EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 96 of 120

Correct — C, (c) 1, 2, 3 and 5. The provision to read is SECTION 16 of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, headed 'Other facilities', which lists the duties of every contractor employing inter-State migrant workmen in connection with the work of an establishment to which the Act applies. Its clauses require the contractor to ensure regular payment of wages; to ensure equal pay for equal work irrespective of sex; to ensure suitable conditions of work, having regard to the fact that the workmen are required to work in a State different from their own; to provide and maintain suitable residential accommodation during the period of employment; to provide the prescribed medical facilities free of charge; to provide such protective clothing as may be prescribed; and, in case of a fatal accident or serious bodily injury, to report to the specified authorities of both States and to the workman's next of kin. Set the four printed statements against that list. Statement 1, equal pay for equal work irrespective of sex, is there. Statement 2, suitable residential accommodation, is there. Statement 3, protective clothing, is there. Statement 5, prescribed medical facilities, is there. Four of the five statements are therefore duties under section 16, and the code that names exactly those four is option (c). Statement 4, a provision for an old age benefit scheme, is not in section 16 and is not anywhere in this Act. That is not an oversight. The Act is a regulatory statute about recruitment and working conditions across State boundaries — it is concerned with what happens to a workman while he is away from home, not with what happens to him in old age. Retirement benefit for organised employment comes from the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 and from the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972; for unorganised workers it comes from schemes framed under the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008. Keeping those two families of legislation apart is the discrimination the item is built on. Two further money entitlements sit just outside section 16 and are worth learning alongside it, because they are the most distinctive features of this Act. Section 14 requires the contractor to pay a DISPLACEMENT ALLOWANCE at the time of recruitment, equal to fifty per cent of the monthly wages payable or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher, and it is not refundable and is in addition to the wages. Section 15 requires a JOURNEY ALLOWANCE, not less than the fare from the place of residence to the place of work, both ways, with wages payable for the period of the journey. Neither appears in this item's list, but a question on this Act is as likely to ask about them as about section 16. Note how the code is printed: option (c) carries no word 'only', because it names four of the five statements rather than a smaller subset.

• (a)2, 3 and 5 only — This code correctly rejects the old age benefit but also drops statement 1, equal pay for equal work irrespective of sex, which is expressly a duty of the contractor under section 16. The omission is easy to make because equal pay is also the subject of a separate statute, the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, and a candidate may reason that a right belonging to that Act cannot also be a duty under this one. It can and it is: the 1979 Act restates the obligation for inter-State migrant workmen so that the contractor who recruits them is directly bound by it, and its presence in section 16 is what makes this code one statement short.
• (b)2, 4 and 5 only — This code makes two errors at once. It admits statement 4, an old age benefit scheme, which appears nowhere in the Act; and it drops statement 3, protective clothing, which section 16 requires the contractor to provide in such form as may be prescribed. Admitting the old age benefit is the more serious mistake, because it confuses a statute about conditions of employment with the social security legislation — the provident fund Act of 1952, the gratuity Act of 1972, the unorganised workers Act of 2008 — under which retirement benefits actually arise.
• (d)1, 3 and 4 only — This code again admits the old age benefit that the Act does not provide, and simultaneously drops two duties that it does — residential accommodation under section 16 and the prescribed medical facilities, which must be supplied free of charge. Accommodation and medical care are among the most important protections in the Act, because the workman is by definition living away from his home State and cannot fall back on his own household or his usual health provision. A code that rejects both while accepting an entitlement the statute never created is wrong at every point on which it differs from the answer.

The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 was enacted to deal with a specific abuse: the recruitment of workers in one State by a middleman, often called a sardar or khatadar, for work in an establishment in another State, where they arrived without local ties, without knowledge of local wage rates and without means of returning. The Act works through four devices. It applies to every establishment and every contractor employing five or more inter-State migrant workmen, and it requires the establishment to be registered and the contractor to be licensed, so that neither operates unrecorded. It defines the workman's entitlements in money: wages not less than those payable to a similar local workman and in any case not below the statutory minimum, a displacement allowance under section 14 paid at recruitment, and a journey allowance under section 15 covering both directions with wages for the travelling days. It imposes the duties of section 16 on the contractor — regular wages, equal pay irrespective of sex, suitable conditions of work, residential accommodation, free prescribed medical facilities, protective clothing, and reporting of fatal accidents to authorities in both States. And it provides machinery for enforcement through inspectors, with the principal employer made liable where the contractor defaults. Parliament has since enacted the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, which is designed to subsume this Act along with a dozen other labour statutes when it is brought into force.

Labour law is the heart of the EO/AO General Ability Test, and the Enforcement Officer's own work is the enforcement of a social security statute against employers, so the paper tests whether a candidate can say what a particular Act obliges a particular person to do. The commonest construction is the one used here: a list in which most items come from the right statute and one comes from a different branch of labour law altogether. The habit rewarded is holding each Act's subject matter clearly — this one is about recruitment and conditions across State lines, not about retirement — and, where possible, attaching a section number, because a card or a note that names section 16 can be checked in the bare Act in seconds. Note that the five numbered statements carry no full stops and that option (c) is printed without the word 'only', both as the booklet sets them.

• Section 16 of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 lists the contractor's duties: regular payment of wages, equal pay for equal work irrespective of sex, suitable conditions of work, residential accommodation, free prescribed medical facilities, protective clothing, and reporting of fatal accidents or serious injury to both States and the next of kin.
• The Act provides no old age or retirement benefit; that comes from the EPF and MP Act, 1952, the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, and the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008.
• Section 14 requires a displacement allowance at recruitment of fifty per cent of monthly wages or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher, not refundable and in addition to wages.
• Section 15 requires a journey allowance of not less than the fare both ways, with wages payable for the period of the journey.
• The Act applies to establishments and contractors employing five or more inter-State migrant workmen.
• Establishments must be registered and contractors licensed under the Act.
• The principal employer is made liable where the contractor fails to provide the required facilities or pay the required amounts.
• The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 is designed to subsume this Act when brought into force.

• Admitting an old age or pension benefit into a statute about working conditions; the two branches of labour law are separate.
• Dropping equal pay for equal work on the ground that it belongs to the Equal Remuneration Act; section 16 restates it as a contractor's duty.
• Overlooking the free medical facilities and the protective clothing, which are the least memorable items in the section 16 list.
• Confusing the displacement allowance of section 14 with the journey allowance of section 15 when the paper asks about the money entitlements.

Labour law items in EO/AO papers ask which facilities or benefits a named Act provides, what threshold brings an establishment within it, what a specific allowance amounts to, or which authority decides a dispute under it. Learn each Act by a one-line subject and a short list of its distinctive sections, and revise the section numbers, because the papers reward precision that a paraphrase cannot supply.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, the displacement allowance payable at the time of recruitment is :

  • (a)Twenty-five per cent of monthly wages or fifty rupees, whichever is higher
  • (b)Fifty per cent of monthly wages or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher
  • (c)One month's wages in every case
  • (d)An amount fixed by the licensing officer in each case

  Answer(b) Fifty per cent of monthly wages or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 applies to an establishment employing inter-State migrant workmen numbering :

  • (a)Five or more
  • (b)Ten or more
  • (c)Twenty or more
  • (d)Fifty or more

  Answer(a) Five or more