Work-from-home jobs to be incentivized under Digital India Programme: Report

According to a recent report, under Digital India programme the Ministry of IT and Electronics is planning to include work-from-home options in new BPO promotion scheme and incentivize firms to set up new units.

“Incentivizing work-from-home jobs through policy-level initiatives can help in creating jobs in the ITES domain while increasing the available talent pool for the sector. This will create employment opportunities in the IT/ITES industry, especially for women and differently-abled persons,” an IT Ministry official said. Currently, the scheme is proposed for a three-year period till March 31, 2022, with an outlay of about ₹270 crore to create about 50,000 work-from-home jobs.

As per the report, the Indian IT Ministry is expected to lunch the initiative as phase II of its BPO Promotion Scheme that incentivizes firms to set up operations in tier-2 and tier-3 cities in the country. Rolled out in 2016, with an objective to create about 1.45 lakh jobs, the scheme had an outlay of about ₹500 crore.

“There is abundant talent pool in the country, especially women, who are not able to join full-time office jobs. The scheme envisages incentives for both employers as well as employees,” the official said. Pointing out that companies do not recruit people for work-from-home jobs on part-time basis, but on contract due to stringent labour laws, the official said, “For contract-based jobs, companies don’t need to provide PF and other job benefits.”

Labour law exemption

There may a relaxation in labour laws due to the ‘work-from-home’ policy just like the way it is given to start-ups under the Startup India programme.

As announced by the government in 2016, start-ups were exempted from nine labour laws that included the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, Employees Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 and Employees State Insurance Act, 1948.

Not just that, the initiative also proposed a provision of a support of 50% of the cost of a laptop (₹10,000 cap) or smartphone (up to ₹5,000) to the employees, along with up to ₹350 per month for broadband.

“We are also thinking about offering salary-based incentives to incentivize employees to stick to work-from-home jobs,” the official said, adding that additional incentive would be given to women employees, differently-abled, SC/ST and those from aspirational (backward) districts.

To avail benefits under the work-from-home scheme, employees will need to have an Aadhaar-linked Universal Account Number.

 “The India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS) seeks to incentivize establishment of 48,300 seats in respect of BPO/ITES operations across the country. It is distributed among each State in proportion of State’s population with an outlay of Rs. 493 Crore. This would help in capacity building in smaller cities in terms of infra & manpower and would become basis for next wave of IT/ITES led growth. This scheme has potential to create employment opportunities of around 1.5 lakh direct jobs considering three shift operations. It may also create good number of indirect jobs.

Digital India Official Website 

Source: The Hindu