The Hindu Business Line : Mandatory health cover for unorganised workers soon

FOLLOWING the recommendations of the Task Force on Social Security, the Union Government is contemplating to come out shortly with an Act making it mandatory for the employers in the unorganised sector to provide health insurance cover to the workers, the Director General of Employees State Insurance Corporation, Mr Ajay Dua, said.

Announcing this while addressing an International Conference on Health Insurance organised by BearingPoint here on Wednesday, Mr Dua, who is a member of the task force, said nearly 40 per cent of the country's population, about 40 crore, belonged to the working class and only 8 per cent of it was in the organised sector. The remaining 92 per cent was in the unorganised sector.

Even in the organised sector, only 7 million were covered with health insurance through ESI and CGHS.

Mr Dua said the task force had recommended a sum of Rs 30,000 per person under health insurance cover and Rs 1 lakh for accidental death cover.

Stating that these insurance premium costs would be built into the wage costs, he said the task force had started discussing the feasibility of the proposal with the insurance companies.

Admitting that there would be some resistance from employers, he said it would take three to four years for the system to stabilise and expected a majority of workers in the unorganised sector to be benefited by the health insurance cover.

Expressing concern over the fall in number of employees under the purview of ESI owing to the threshold limit of Rs 7,500 per month salary, Mr Dua said the Government is also contemplating to increase the threshold limit to Rs 10,000 per month so that more number of employees could come under the ESI purview.

The Government also plans to extend ESI coverage to all the 1,649 municipalities across the country. Currently, the ESI coverage is limited to only 700 geographical locations in the country.

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