Administration Apathy in Translating an Act into Panjabi Language

Panjab's labor department and the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Welfare Board are unable to get the BOCW Act 1996 and related rules translated into Panjabi language in Gurmukhi script as demanded by a labor rights activist around 20 months ago. The higher education and language departments issued four orders between February 2020 and December 2022 directing that Panjabi be given more importance by mentioning the names of all govt. offices, departments, institutions, boards, road names, and milestones in the official language at the top of all correspondence, boards, and signage. The correspondences, replies, and orders involving the Punjab State Information Commission, the board, the labor department, and the Punjabi University in Patiala reveals that even the Estimates Committee of the state Assembly had sought the translated copies of the Acts and the rules, but the labor department could not arrange them. When contacted, Manvesh Singh Sidhu, secretary at the labor department, said, ‘It (the Act and the rules) has been sent to the language department. They are still working on it. We don’t have the expertise to translate into Panjabi. We have also sent reminders to the language department. In one of the replies we received, they asked us to get it translated from a legal luminary.’ The Punjab Language Department turned down the request to translate the Panjab BOCW Rules 2008 citing shortage of translators and already pending works. This is a grave lapse as the Act and its rules deal with labor issues and that section of society which cannot access them because most of them do not know English.