By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: The Naveen Patnaik led BJD Government is all set to amend the Odisha to amend Factory Act 1948 to boost power generation units.
The State Cabinet, which met under chairmanship of Chief Minister Patnaik, has decided to amend the Factory Act 1948 to increase the threshold of workers in the power-generating industrial units from 10 to 20 while the limit was increased to 40 from 20 workers in manual labour-intensive industrial units.
The industrial units would be allowed to allot overtime working hours during one quarter for 115 hours. Earlier, the limit was 55 hours. Besides, a proposal for amendment to the Factory Act was approved under which women workers can be engaged from 7 pm to 6 am subject to their safety and security.The workers will now avail 180 days of leave instead of 240 days.
The Factories Act, 1948, as amended by the Factories Act, 1987, serves to assist in formulating national policies in India with respect to occupational safety and health in factories and docks in India. It deals with various problems concerning safety, health, efficiency and well-being of the persons at work places.
State Cabinet has approved amendments to be made to Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR)– 2007 and IPR – 2015.Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy said VAT, Entry Tax and Entertainment Tax related incentives are substituted by net SGST incentive. The fiscal benefit shall be made available to all eligible units.
The amendments in IPR 2007 and 2015 are primarily because of change of law in the country from VAT to GST regime.These amendments will facilitate reimbursement of incentives to both MSME and large industries in the State giving them much required relief in these difficult times.
Recently, the Government of Haryana had proposed to amend the Factories Act, 1948 (the “Factories Act”) and introduce certain new provisions relating to working hours, allowing women workers to work at night, offences that would be compoundable, etc. vide the Factories (Haryana Amendment) Bill, 2018 (the “Bill”) dated August 28, 2018. However, the Bill had been pending for assent from the President of India.
