EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 99 of 120

Correct — B, (b) 3 1 4 2. Read that row against the header A B C D printed above the Code block: it pairs A with 3, B with 1, C with 4 and D with 2. Taking the four pairs one at a time: A. Displacement Allowance goes with 3, the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979. Section 14 of that Act requires the contractor to pay every inter-State migrant workman, at the time of recruitment, a displacement allowance equal to fifty per cent of the monthly wages payable to him or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher; it is not refundable and is in addition to his wages. The allowance exists because the workman is being taken out of his own State, and it is unique to this Act — no other labour statute uses the term. B. Certifying Surgeon goes with 1, the Factories Act, 1948. Section 10 of that Act empowers the State Government to appoint qualified medical practitioners to be certifying surgeons for a specified local area or for specified factories. The certifying surgeon examines young persons and grants the certificates of fitness on which their employment depends, examines persons employed in work involving danger to health, and supervises factories where injurious substances or processes are used. C. Half-monthly payment goes with 4, the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923. Compensation for temporary disablement, whether total or partial, is paid under section 4 not as a lump sum but as a half-monthly payment, calculated as a percentage of the workman's monthly wages and continuing while the disablement lasts. Section 6 allows the Commissioner to review such a payment and section 7 allows it to be commuted into a lump sum, both of which confirm that the half-monthly payment is this Act's own device. D. Piece work goes with 2, the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. That Act contemplates wages fixed by output as well as by time: the appropriate government may fix a minimum piece rate for a scheduled employment, and section 17 provides that where an employee is employed on piece work for which a minimum TIME rate and not a minimum piece rate has been fixed, the employer must nonetheless pay him at not less than the minimum time rate. Piece work is thus expressly regulated by this statute. The efficient way to work the item is by anchors rather than by testing whole rows. Displacement allowance belongs unmistakably to the 1979 Act, so A must be 3, which removes options (a) and (c) at a stroke, since both pair A with 2. Between the two rows that remain, the difference is whether B is 1 and C is 4, as option (b) has it, or B is 4 and C is 1, as option (d) has it. The certifying surgeon is a Factories Act office, so B is 1, and option (b) is the answer. Two secure pairings out of four settled the whole question, which is how a matching item should always be attacked.

• (a)2 1 4 3 — This row reads A-2, B-1, C-4, D-3. It gets the middle two pairs right — certifying surgeon with the Factories Act and half-monthly payment with the Employees' Compensation Act — and then swaps the outer two, sending displacement allowance to the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 and piece work to the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979. Both halves of that swap are wrong. The Minimum Wages Act contains no displacement allowance; the allowance is a creation of section 14 of the 1979 Act and exists precisely because a worker has been moved out of his home State. And while the 1979 Act certainly guarantees wages, it does not regulate payment by output; piece rates are the Minimum Wages Act's subject.
• (c)2 4 1 3 — This row reads A-2, B-4, C-1, D-3, and not one of its four pairings is correct. It sends displacement allowance to the Minimum Wages Act, the certifying surgeon to the Employees' Compensation Act, half-monthly payment to the Factories Act and piece work to the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act. The second and third of those are the most instructive errors: a certifying surgeon is an inspecting and certifying officer under the Factories Act, appointed under section 10, whereas the Employees' Compensation Act is administered by a Commissioner and involves a medical practitioner only as an examiner of an injured workman; and half-monthly payment is the form of compensation for temporary disablement, a subject the Factories Act does not touch at all.
• (d)3 4 1 2 — This row reads A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2, and it is the closest of the three wrong options — it places displacement allowance with the 1979 Act and piece work with the Minimum Wages Act, both correctly, and then transposes the middle pair. It makes the certifying surgeon an office of the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 and half-monthly payment a feature of the Factories Act, 1948, when both belong the other way round. This is the option that catches a candidate who anchors on the outer two pairs, feels confident, and stops checking. On a matching item the discipline is to verify every pair that distinguishes the surviving rows, not merely the ones that first came to mind.

Indian labour legislation is a set of separate statutes, each with its own vocabulary, and the fastest way to master it is to learn which distinctive term belongs to which Act. The four terms in this item are good examples of that principle. Displacement allowance and journey allowance are peculiar to the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, which is the only statute concerned with a worker recruited in one State to work in another; sections 14 and 15 create them. Certifying surgeon is an office of the Factories Act, 1948 under section 10, sitting alongside the Inspectors and the Chief Inspector of section 8 as the medical arm of factory regulation, and its central function is certifying the fitness of young persons for employment. Half-monthly payment is the mode of compensation for temporary disablement under the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 — an Act renamed from the Workmen's Compensation Act by the amendment of 2009 — whose scheme is that permanent injury and death attract lump sums while temporary disablement attracts a recurring payment that can be reviewed or commuted. Piece work belongs to the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, which regulates wages fixed by output as well as by time and guarantees the minimum time rate to a piece worker where no piece rate has been fixed. A candidate who builds a glossary of one or two signature terms per Act can answer almost any matching item in this area without reading the whole list.

Three questions on this paper take the Match List form, and all of them work the same way: two lists printed side by side, List I lettered A to D and List II numbered 1 to 4, with four options each consisting of one row of numerals under an A B C D header. The format rewards a particular technique rather than more knowledge — identify the one or two pairings you are certain of, use them to eliminate rows, and then check only the pairings that separate whatever survives. Guessing whole rows is slow and unreliable. The labour law block that closes this paper is its heaviest, and matching items are how the Commission tests breadth across several statutes in a single question.

• Displacement allowance: section 14 of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 — fifty per cent of monthly wages or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher, paid at recruitment.
• Journey allowance: section 15 of the same Act, covering the fare both ways with wages for the days of travel.
• Certifying surgeon: section 10 of the Factories Act, 1948 — a qualified medical practitioner appointed by the State Government.
• The certifying surgeon grants certificates of fitness for young persons and examines workers in occupations involving danger to health.
• Half-monthly payment: the mode of compensation for temporary disablement under section 4 of the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923.
• Sections 6 and 7 of that Act provide for review and for commutation of a half-monthly payment into a lump sum.
• The Workmen's Compensation Act, 1923 was renamed the Employees' Compensation Act by the amendment of 2009.
• Piece work: the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 allows minimum piece rates, and section 17 guarantees the minimum time rate to a piece worker for whom no piece rate has been fixed.

• Testing all four pairs of every row instead of anchoring on the pairing you are surest of and eliminating.
• Stopping after two correct pairs; the closest wrong option here is right about A and D and wrong about B and C.
• Confusing the certifying surgeon of the Factories Act with the medical examination of an injured workman under the Employees' Compensation Act.
• Assuming that because the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act guarantees wages, it also regulates piece rates.

Matching items in the EO/AO labour law blocks pair provisions with Acts, authorities with statutes, or definitions with sections. They test breadth rather than depth, so the preparation that pays is a single sheet listing each Act with its year, its subject in one line and its two or three unmistakable terms. In the hall, work by elimination from the pairs you know.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Certifying Surgeon is an authority appointed under which one of the following enactments ?

  • (a)The Employees' Compensation Act, 1923
  • (b)The Factories Act, 1948
  • (c)The Minimum Wages Act, 1948
  • (d)The Payment of Wages Act, 1936

  Answer(b) The Factories Act, 1948

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923, compensation for temporary disablement is paid as :

  • (a)A single lump sum
  • (b)A half-monthly payment
  • (c)A monthly pension for life
  • (d)A quarterly payment for two years

  Answer(b) A half-monthly payment