Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VI. - Seasonal factories

Collection:: Economics Books

18 CHAPTER VI. lengthy and often difficult travel which has necessarily to be concentrat- ed into that part of the year when the work is in full swing. Moreover, with the exception of tea factories, such places are mostly small and fre- quently owned by uneducated people whose acquaintance with the law is slight and whose isolation makes it easy to practise evasion. This is particularly true of the cotton ginning and pressing factories, where the situation is apt to be further complicated by the pooling system to which we have already referred and by the practice of short-term leases. Such factories are frequently leased for a few years or even for one season and the constant change of ownership involves constant re-education by the factory inspection department. There is also a tendency, in more than ane class of seasonal factory, to concentrate work in factories employing just under 20 persons in order to evade the requirements of the Facto- ries Act. Although this has been defeated in some provinces by the extension of the Act to places using power and employing between 10 and 20 persons, the result has been an increase of work for the inspecting staffs. We do not consider that proper control can be exercised over the working of the ordinary seasonal factory unless it is inspected at least twice in every season. We recognise that in some cases this is an almost impossible re- quirement for the regular officers of the factory inspecting staffs. Apart from considerations of expense, regular inspectors on tour, when away from large centres, are well known and carefully watched and it is difficult for them to make unexpected visits. Part-time Inspectors. We do not contemplate that the inspection of seasonal factories should be made entirely or even predominantly through the agency of the whole-time inspection staffs, although inspection should invariably be carried out under their direction. We visualise the more systematic and systematised use of the part-time inspector. The magistrate or other officer who may be appointed in this capacity in any outlying district has ordinarily one big advantage over the full-time inspector, in that he lives near the factory and can reach it at any time without attracting particular attention. On the other hand, this type of inspector has suffered in the past from one important disadvantage, namely, the lack of technical knowledge. Nevertheless, under slightly altered conditions, such officers can do much valuable work and should be increasingly used. Cotton gin- ning factories alone now number over 2,000 and, as a result, occupy a large amount of the time of the full-time inspector. In one month, or even less, a selected magistrate or revenue officer could acquire knowledge of the machinery, law, registers, ete., sufficient to enable him to carry out efficient mspections in places of this kind. A special course of instruction, to be conducted by the Chief Inspector, should be held from time to time for the selected officers. This should include practical work on inspection. Thereafter, all that would be necessary would be for a full-time inspector to visit a proportion of such factories to check the work done, and to deal with questions of special difficulty. We visualise the successful applica- bion of this system in the case of other types of seasonal factories, e.g., rice mills in South India and Burma. We recommend that selected officers

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