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 VIII. - Mines

Collection:: Economics Books

MINES. 111 in a lead process by the medical staff of the Corporation. The manages ment has also established a system of periodical medical inspection with a view to excluding persons who appear to be suffering from lead poisoning or constitutionally unsuited to employment in alead process. In spite of these precautions, however, a number of cases of poisoning are report- ed annually and additional measures appear to be necessary. Secondly, we observed that, in applying the Mines and Factories Acts to the Shan States, sections 23 and 28 of the former and sections 21, 22, 27, 28, 31 and 35 of the latter have not been applied. These sections include the pro- vision for a weekly holiday and the limitation of weekly hours in mines, and all the important provisions relating to hours and holidays in fac- tories. We were unable to ascertain the grounds on which these exemp- tions were made, and we recommend that the omission of these sections be now reconsidered. Mineral Oil. Petroleum is produced in India in the Punjab, in Assam and in Burma, nearly 9/10ths of the output coming from Burma. We received very full memoranda and every facility for enquiry from the Burmah Oil Company, which, with its associated Company in Assam, is responsible for about 4/5ths of the Indian output. We visited a small subsidiary field in Assam, and the main field at Yenangyaung, on the east bank of the Irrawaddy. What we say below must not be read as necessarily appli- sable to other companies, from which we received no evidence. Yenang- yaung is dependent entirely on the oil wells and a pipe line 260 miles long conveys the oil to the large refineries near Rangoon. The field is thickly studded with rigs, the wells numbering nearly 2,500 in this small areq. The settlement of the Burmah Oil Company includes offices and workshops, housing for the staff and more than half the workers, recreation grounds and a large and well-equipped hospital. Approximately half the em- ployees are Burmans and half Indians, the proportion of skilled labour being high. The normal week is one of 56 hours, worked either in 8 hour shifts or in five 10 hour days with a short Saturday. Some 15% of those employed work 8 hour shifts on continuous processes, without a rest day. Practically no women or children are employed. After a period of labour unrest, the Company decided in 1923 that it was essential to get into closer touch with the workers and the conditions under which they work. They therefore established a labour bureau with a labour superintendent in charge, whose duties include all engagements and dismissals as well as the numerous tasks ordinarily undertaken by a welfare officer. We were informed that, from the Company’s point of view, the superintendent is the representative of the workers, and it is his business to find out their needs and aspirations and to endeavour to obtain Justice for them. The experiment appears to us to be justifying itself by the results obtained. Of the 17,000 workers employed by this Company on the actual oilfields, about 12% are sub- ject to the Factories Act, but the bulk of their workers and of those em- Ployed by other oil companies are subject to no statutory control in the matter of hours and health and to few statutory regulations in respect of

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