Financial Assistance for Education (GBOCWWB)(FAE-GBOCWWB)

Overview

About FAE-GBOCWWB

Financial Assistance for Education (GBOCWWB) is the Goa Building and Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board's grant towards the studies of a registered building worker's child. The one thing no official Goa document states is how much it pays: from the 2008 rules to the claim form the labour department hosts today, every text leaves the figure to the Board. What those documents do settle is who can claim, when a new member becomes entitled, and what a paper claim has to carry.

Everything about the grant hangs on one sentence in the Goa rules published in the Official Gazette of 10 April 2008: rule 286 lets the Board fix both the sum and the courses it pays for "from time to time", and names Form No. XLIII as the claim (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008). The Board itself was constituted that same day, 10 April 2008, under section 18 of the central Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996 (Goa labour department, about the Board).

In practice the benefit is for a family where a parent does building or construction work in Goa, holds a Board registration and keeps the monthly contribution paid. The child is the student, yet the claim stands or falls on the parent's membership: Form XLIII asks nearly as much about the parent's subscription history as about the course. It is a benefit of the construction workers' Board alone, separate from the Goa Labour Welfare Board's schemes for industrial workers' children and from the schemes on the Goa CM Scholarship Portal.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The Board has published no application window. Rule 286 says the form is to be submitted "within such time as may be specified by the Board" (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008), and the Board's notifications page on the labour department site carries no notices, only "Coming Soon" (GBOCWWB notifications).

Two practical limits follow from the documents. The earliest a claim can be complete is after admission, once the fee receipt and the head of institution's certificate for that academic year exist. The earliest a new member can claim is three months after joining the Fund, under the amendment notified on 28 September 2018, which came "into force at once" (Official Gazette, Series I No. 28, 11 October 2018).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The scheme's four eligibility lines leave out three details from the Goa rules that decide real claims.

• What the ninety days mean. Rule 28 makes a worker eligible for registration after engaging in building or other construction work "for not less than ninety days during the preceding twelve months", between the ages of eighteen and sixty (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008).
• The waiting period after joining. Rule 290(2) originally held back every benefit except the death benefit and accident medical aid until one year after a person became a member. The 2018 amendment replaced "one year" with "three months" and added the words "subject to having an Aadhar Card" (Official Gazette, Series I No. 28, 11 October 2018). A worker who joins in June, say, has no education claim before September.
• No income test. Rule 286 sets no income ceiling, and Form XLIII has no field for family income; the only money it records is the parent's subscription payments (Form XLIII).

Rule 286 also speaks of "children of the members" without an age limit or a number (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008). The marriage grant in the same rules is tied to two children of a beneficiary, so the silence on education is noticeable, though the Board may attach its own conditions when it specifies courses (Official Gazette, Series I No. 28, 11 October 2018).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme publishes no exclusion list, but the Board's documents shut out two groups of families.

The first is the unregistered worker. The labour department's charter lets unregistered workers or their dependants claim under the Board's first four schemes on a certificate from a builder or the area Inspector, and those four are medical assistance, disability pension, funeral assistance and death benefit; Financial Assistance for Education is seventh on the same list, so a child of an unregistered worker has no route to it (Citizen's Charter, Labour and Employment, 2016).

The second is the family whose parent has dropped out of the Fund. Under rule 30, a worker ceases to be a beneficiary on reaching sixty, on failing to do ninety days of building work in a year, or on leaving the contribution unpaid for a continuous year (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

No renewal procedure is published for the education grant itself. The institution's certificate on Form XLIII is issued for a named academic year (Form XLIII), so the form works as a one-year claim, and a later year means a new form with a new certificate.

What has to be kept alive is the parent's membership. The 2018 amendment cut the worker's contribution from twenty to ten rupees a month and kept rule 272(2) unchanged (Official Gazette, Series I No. 28, 11 October 2018). Rule 272 wants that money three months ahead, deposited at a bank the Board names in the member's own district. Miss a whole year of it and the membership lapses; the Secretary or an officer he authorises can take the worker back on the arrears plus a fine of two rupees for each month, and no more than twice (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008). That is why the claim form asks whether the membership "has been revived" and for what period.

What you get

Award & benefits

The grant is paid in cash, in an amount the Board decides; no published document gives a rate, a per-class slab or a ceiling. Each official text that deals with the scheme defers to the Board:

The 2018 notification shows that the government writes rupee figures into these rules when it chooses to: it set the maternity benefit at Rs 10,000 and the marriage grant at ten thousand rupees, and raised the death benefit (Official Gazette, Series I No. 28, 11 October 2018), while rule 286 still reads as it did in 2008 (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008). The published record therefore gives a family no figure to plan around before the Board sanctions a claim. A fixed Goa rate quoted anywhere would have to trace to a Board decision, and the Board's orders and circulars page, where one would be posted, reads only "Coming Soon" (GBOCWWB orders and circulars).

• Financial Assistance, as determined by the Board, for the education of the children of the Worker.

What to prepare

Documents required

The scheme's document list covers what to attach; the claim form itself adds a certificate that the list does not mention. Its last page is signed and sealed by the principal or head of the institution, who certifies the student's course for the academic year, confirms having examined the application, and names the university or board the institution is affiliated to (Form XLIII).

The form splits its questions between three people:

Because the 2018 amendment makes Board benefits payable "subject to having an Aadhar Card", the worker's Aadhaar is worth carrying even though the scheme's list leaves it out (Official Gazette, Series I No. 28, 11 October 2018).

Step by step

How to apply

The claim is a four-page paper set: a cover sheet reproducing the wording of rule 286, the application on Form XLIII, the parent's affidavit and the institution's certificate (Scheme-8 sheet). Two parts depend on someone else's signature, the head of institution's seal and the affidavit signed before an MLA, MP, panchayat president or gazetted officer, so those are the ones to arrange first. The finished set is addressed to the Board's Secretary, a post the Labour Commissioner holds as Member Secretary and chief executive of the Board (Goa labour department, about the Board), at Patto Plaza in Panaji.

The Goa CM Scholarship Portal is not a route for this claim: its category-wise list of eligible schemes does not include the construction workers' Board's education scheme (CM Scholarship Portal, scheme list).

Chasing a Paper Claim in Panaji

The Board publishes no online status tracker for education claims, so keep a copy of the whole set and ask the counter for a dated acknowledgement when it is handed in. Follow-up goes to the Board's head office, whose contact page lists 0832-2437081 and gbocwwb@gmail.com (GBOCWWB contact page). The rules make the Board responsible for the "speedy settlement of claims" (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008), which is the line to quote when a claim has sat for months.

If a claim stalls, the "Public Grievance" link in the labour department's menu leads to the Goa Online public grievance service (Goa labour department). For a formal answer on a specific file, an RTI application quoting the filing date goes to the Board's Public Information Officer, whom the Board's RTI page now lists as a Junior Engineer (Civil) at Panaji, with a Cashier cum UDC as the assistant officer (GBOCWWB Public Information Officers). The department's 2018 charter had named the Account Officer (BOCW) for that role (Citizen's Charter, 2018).

How winners are picked

Selection process

No selection rule is published. Form XLIII collects subject-wise marks with the percentage and the student's SC/ST status, and the student signs a promise to abide by the scheme's conditions "if selected for the scholarship" (Form XLIII). No Board document says how marks or category affect a claim, or whether every eligible claim is paid; sanction sits with the Board and the officers it delegates powers to under rule 269 (Goa BOCW Rules, 2008).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The binding terms sit in the parent's affidavit. The parent swears to the child's course, the year of joining the Board, the registration number and the date up to which subscription is paid, and agrees that if any of these facts is later found wrong, the scholarship amount will be paid back, with the Secretary's decision final. The same affidavit adds a wider consent: "I also agree to recover any amount of default due from me" (Form XLIII). The student separately declares the facts true and undertakes to follow the scheme's conditions.

Get help

Contact

The Board's contact page gives a Gmail address, gbocwwb@gmail.com, rather than a government one, alongside 0832-2437081 and an office on the 2nd floor of Shrama Shakti Bhavan at Patto Plaza, Panaji (GBOCWWB contact page). The department's general email, com-labo.goa@nic.in, and its field offices, including the Deputy Labour Commissioner at Margao on 0832-2714905, are listed in its charter (Citizen's Charter, Labour and Employment, 2016).

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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