Odishatv Bureau
Berhampur: The Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) today demanded increase of the minimum wage from Rs 90 to Rs 200 in Odisha in order to check large scale labour migration from the state to other places including abroad.

"Due to low minimum wage in the state, several workers from the state and mostly from southern Odisha`s Ganjam and Gajapati districts are migrating to other states and abroad in search of livelihood," vice president of INTUC and Rajya Sabha member Ram Chandra Khuntia said here.

Addressing labourers of different organisations of Ganjam and Gajapati district, the Congress MP said the workers in the state were getting low wages, even though the Central government fixed the minimum wage at Rs 125 in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). "We demand the state government should revise the minimum wage in the state immediately to arrest the labour migration from the state," Khuntia said.

Former union minister of state for labour Chandra Sekhar Sahu also addressed the meeting. Stating that more number of workers are needed to be enrolled under the welfare fund schemes for the construction workers and to be insured under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Khuntia pointed out that while at least five crore workers were enrolled under the NHIS across the country, only three lakh were insured under the scheme in Odisha.

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