The labour ministry’s efforts to capitalise on demonetisation to push financial inclusion even for temporary workers in unorganised sectors have begun to yield quick results. Following its November 25 missive to the states, banks and employers, 9.6 lakh new bank accounts have been opened till February 2, averaging 1.37 lakh per day.

Enthused by this, labour and employment minister Bandaru Dattatrey has asked his department and subordinate offices to carry on with the effort till March 31, 2017. Advising all principal employers to ensure wage payment through bank accounts, chief labour commissioner AK Nayak had said wages for November

must be paid by the month-end or by the first week of December.

The ministry sources said the maximum number of new bank accounts (94,364) for unoragnised sector workers have been opened in Tamil Nadu during the seven-day exercise. A little more than 90,000 bank accounts were opened in Maharashtra, 85,790 in Bihar, 80,939 in Harayana and 80,394 in West Bengal.

“Special campaign for opening of Bank accounts for organized & unorganized sector was initiated by @LabourMinistry on 26th Nov 2016. By seeing the outstanding results of this campaign, it has been decided to run it till 31st March 2017 so that the workers will receive their salaries without any cuts and will lead to inculcating the habit of use of cashless transactions,” Dattatreya tweeted.

The move to open bank account is important as some industry executives and economists have suggested that most of the daily labourers and contract workers have been hit particularly hard because of the note ban as most of them are paid in cash.

According to Pronab Sen, former chairman of the National Statistical Commission, the informal sector, which makes up for around 45% of the country’s gross domestic product and almost 80% of jobs, will be hit harder owing to demonetisation than the organised sector.

Appropriately, the labour ministry’s thrust is on the unorganised sector. It is being assumed that most of the workers in the organised sector have bank accounts.

Any move to ensure payment of salary through bank accounts will bring more transparency, as both employers and employees could be tracked for any tax evasion.