PANAJI
Under the expansion of the beneficiary group that can avail of the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) schemes, 10,000 construction site workers in the state will now receive medical and cash benefits under the central scheme.
Announcing this, Regional Director of ESIC, C V Joshi, said the scheme ‘ESI 2.0: Health Reform Agenda’ launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was aimed at bringing the unorganized sector into the purview of the scheme.
“So far, field officers have covered 130 construction-related units and as of January 2016 approximately 10,000 construction site workers have been brought under ESI,” he informed.
Joshi said private workers from the medical and education sector would also be included in the list through a notification that is expected to be passed soon. The process to include them is on,
he added.
ESIC, will be celebrating its 64th Foundation Day on February 24. “We are entering into a new era of development at ESIC and plan to cover every single district in the country. As far as Goa goes, we have already achieved 100 percent coverage in every district in the state,” Joshi said.
Also as part of the expanding health reforms, upgradation and improvement of health services and infrastructure are also planned. In addition, the state has 1,75,000 individual workers covered under the scheme and a total of 7 lakh beneficiaries (including families of the workers) that benefit from it.
For the financial year 2015-16, under the sickness benefit, a total of 7,615 people have claimed ` 159.62 lakh. Maternity benefits to the tune of ` 94.74 lakh were claimed by 965 women. Under the temporary disability benefit, 461 cases were registered costing the central government ` 29.49 lakh and permanent disability benefits were claimed by 4,710 persons costing a total of ` 56.66 lakh. 2,787 payments worth ` 65 lakh were released towards death benefits (including accidents during commuting to work). Under the Rajiv Gandhi Shramik Kalyan Yojana (RGSKY) scheme, 492 people who lost their jobs were given a total of ` 51 lakh in compensation.
