Hyderabad: A message has been circulating on WhatsApp that claimed that the Labour and Employment Ministry has granted a sum of Rs 1,20,000 to labourers employed between the years 1991 to 2020.
The viral claim stated that, "The workers who have worked between 1991 and 2020, have the right to receive the benefit of Rs 120000 from Ministry of Labour and Employment. Check if your name is in the list of the people who have the rights to withdraw this benefits (sic)." The claim also had the official website link to the Ministry of Labour and Employment website at the top.
Fact Check
The claim is false. Such messages were circulated earlier too but were debunked. Yet they remain in circulation on social media groups.
NewsMeter visited the link attached to the claim that is said to have the list of beneficiaries. The link took the user to a page which doesn't have the information that the message claimed to have.
(Screenshot of the page, which one clicks the suspicious link)
The page doesn't look like the official page of the Ministry of Labour and Employment. It also had images of people who reside aboard (or at least as portrayed in the image) commenting on how thankful they are for the benefits they received from the Ministry of Labour and Employment. The page is fake and misleading. The same set of massages and notifications are displayed on multiple visits too. It can be said that the link to the official page of the ministry has been used to drive traffic to the website.
We also found that the Press Information Bureau (PIB) had debunked this message in 2020. It also confirmed that the Labour Ministry had made no such announcement.
Hence the claim is false and misleading. It is evident that it is a misleading claim to promote a hoax website and was being shared to falsely state that the Centre is providing benefits worth ā¹1.2 lakh to workers employed from 1991 to 2020.