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 XI. - Transport services and public works

Collection:: Economics Books

178 CHAPTER XI, recommendations took sufficient account of the desire of many seamen to spend between voyages comparatively long periods in their villages and their value as a check to unemployment was further weakened by the encouragement which the roster system would have given to the old and the inefficient seamen to remain on the waiting list. But when the Committee's recommendations were rejected as impracticable, the importance of ensuring that the system adopted should operate to reduce unemployment seems to have been overlooked. With one exception, the steps taken in the last few years have not been calculated to have this effect, and the problem to-day is as serious as it was in 1922. In Bombay, according to the estimate of the Indian Seamen’s Union, which appears to be approximately correct, there is employment at any one time for only one-third of the number available for employment. In the Ship- ping Office we found a number of serangs and butlers who, in spite of their previous satisfactory service, had been out of employment for periods varying from one to four years. The Shipping Master informed us that he had no control over new recruits whose names were being entered in the register, even though it was certain that no employment would be available for the majority of them for a considerable time. Position in Calcutta. In Calcutta the position is equally unsatisfactory. According bo the estimate of the Shipping Master, only about one-fourth of the total number seeking employment can hope to be successful. Here too there was for long the same indiscriminate registration of new recruits. From the 1st July 1922 to the end of 1925 over 29,500 new men were granted certificates to enable them to go to sea, while the number of those who succeeded in obtaining employment at sea during these years was less than 16,000. The position would have been even worse but for the fact that from 1926 the Shipping Master, on his own authority, stopped further registration of new recruits, except at the request of the officers of the ships on whose articles they were to be signed on. As a result of this action, the number of new men registered in the course of a year has fallen from 10,000 to about 5,000. An attempt has been made at Calcutta to construct a register of seamen, presumably in order to ascertain the numbers available and possibly to facilitate employment by roster. But the register in its present form is unwieldy and of questionable value; it includes the names of seamen who entered service as early as 1887, many of whom are now dead or have voluntarily retired from sea service. The Shipping Master declared that he had no autho- rity to remove a name from the register and that his instructions were to register all seamen. As a result he had perforce inserted the names of men who had been out of employment for periods extending to 15 and 16 years and who were obviously unfitted for further sea service Principle of Rotation. The problem has been aggravated by the tendency to concede he demand that seamen should be employed in rotation in order to

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