In February 2021, Labour and Employment Secretary Apurva Chandra said that Companies will have to give three days of paid leaves and 12 hours of work per day to their employees with the consent of the workers.
In December 2021, Union Labor Minister Bhupender Yadav said that 13 states have pre-published draft rules on The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code. These are Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Punjab, Manipur, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and UT of Jammu and Kashmir. According to Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions code a “week” means a period of seven days beginning at midnight on Saturday night or such other night as may be approved in writing for a particular area by the Chief Inspector-cum-Facilitator.
As a working-class citizen, I thought I could suggest a few changes which can improve the lives of the labour class in this country.
The working class can be majorly divided into two parts – private sector and public sector employees.
All citizens are dependent upon part of the public sector employees’ service to complete their work pertaining to passport, licence, birth certificates and so on. Some of the private sector employees are forced to take a holiday from work to complete their mandatory constitutional requirements.
Sometimes, the work might not be completed in a day and further leaves need to be applied to complete it. The leaves that are meant for rewinding or unwinding from work pressure ends up being strewn away for such activities that adds more pressure on the individual.
Some private sector companies have six-day work policies and that leaves the employee with one day off on Sunday during which the government offices are closed as well. The basic tenet of public service is defeated with such arrangements. Public holidays are few and far that planning for important government related task is next to impossible for private sector employees.
Thanks to Digital India some of the bill payment works can now be completed online. For example, earlier, one had to stand in long queue in electricity department office to pay the bill. Sometimes, it may take an hour or two, sometimes when one reaches the counter, it becomes lunch time and the counter gets closed for an hour, and people would have to either wait till the public service employee complete his lunch or come another day to pay the bill.
The ordeals in passport office or even Regional Transportation Office is inexplicable. Though the services have drastically improved, it still requires an individual to be present on the day of the appointment in the passport office to complete his application formalities.
Very little change has been accomplished in state government offices, there is a reluctance to change in these offices and people have to run from pillar to post to get an address change in ration card or even for registration of land.
In 2012, Raman Sharma, an RTI activist from Jammu discovered a fact that the Government of India has issued no order till then which officially declares Sunday as a holiday. The Department of Personnel and Training, Government of India in its reply dated 18th July, 2012 signed by B Bandopadhyay, undersecretary stated, “As per records available in JCA section of Department of Personnel & Training, there is no information regarding declaration of Sunday as holiday.”
In 2013, Saudi Arabia changed the start of its two-day weekend from Thursday-Friday to Friday-Saturday to help co-ordinate business and banking days with the rest of the world. Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar have also switched to a Friday-Saturday weekend. So, there are precedence that weekend holidays can be changed by a sovereign country.
Taking cognisance of all the issues and possible available solutions, government has to make amends in the policy with regards to weekends and try to find a middle lane that would benefit all the laborers across the private and public sector. Though, the announcements were made about bringing the change in working hours, wages and four-day working in the current fiscal, the change is not visible yet or there is a challenge in implementation.
Therefore, I would like to suggest that the government look into an option to bring in a skewed weekend holidays for private sector and public sector, which will benefit the working class in the private sector to complete their mandatory government tasks.
It would be good to have public sector especially departments and offices that caters to general public to work on Saturdays and Sundays and provide weekends on some other days. Meanwhile, private sector companies that works with clients overseas as well as inside the country can continue having Saturdays and Sundays as weekends. This will also help in distributing the weekend rush in railway stations, airport and tourist and spiritual destinations, improve the occupancies in hotels and restaurants.