Contributed by Sushant Munjal

A recent announcement made by the Haryana Government over the hiking of the minimum pay-scale for unskilled employees working in the SMEs has triggered a thought which has a serious tone to it. As compared to other states Haryana has some of the best SMEs, who have excelled in their own right and delivered many goods which by any standards are higher than some of the other SME oriented state industries.

To make matters worse the comparison among other state governments minimum wages for unskilled workers working in the SMEs are somewhat too less than what the Haryana state government has now implemented. Punjab has the minimum of Rs 2,440, whereas Rs 2,100 in Himachal Pradesh, Rs 2,600 in Uttar Pradesh and Rs 2,080 in Uttarakhand. This in itself speaks why some of the SMEs would want to migrate to other states.

The PHD Chambers said that it is quite surprising that while reviewing the wages of various scheduled employees, the government has hiked the wages of the unskilled category as well, which is not in spirit of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. The act also empowers the state to fix rates of minimum wages only and their revision from time to time. Pointing out that the notification surprisingly prescribes that unskilled employees with 10 years experience would be deemed to be categorized as semi-skilled-A category employee and after three years the semi-skilled-A category would be categorized as semi-skilled-B employee. The chamber also said that a worker can’t be categorized as semi-skilled or skilled merely by working for a specified number of years.

All this overtly will affect the state which has some booming SMEs on the path to success.