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The Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) has launched a pilot project on “Annual Preventive Health Check-up Programme” for ESI insured persons, aged 40 years and above. The aim is early detection of diseases in insured persons. The trade union representatives demanded the Centre to take coordinated efforts to ensure proper sanitation and drinking water facilities in workers’ areas so that many communicable and non communicable diseases could be prevented.
The 186th meeting of the ESIC has also decided to relax contributory condition for Covid 19 relief scheme. Workers’ representatives have been demanding that to help families of the insured persons who died due to Covid 19, the contributory condition of payment from 70 days should be relaxed. It has been reduced to 35 days for those who are eligible. “Many workers may not have the required attendance of 70 days during the lockdown period due to closure of units or job loss. We demanded that the stipulation of 70 days’ attendance must go and the ESIC has relaxed it,” said AITUC general secretary Amarjeet Kaur after the meeting. BMS representative V Radhakrishnan said the decision will help more than one lakh families of workers who died during the pandemic.
The meeting also approved the audited annual accounts and Annual Report of the ESIC for 2020- 2021. The ESIC also announced construction of new ESI Hospitals at Gurugram (Manesar), Meerut (UP), Dubri (Odisha), Atchutapuram, Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and taking over of ESIS Hospital at Tinsukia, Assam. The ESIC also decided to form high powered committees on on Buildings & Infrastructure of ESI, Human Resources and Information and Technology for improving and strengthening service delivery mechanism of the ESIC.
Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav chaired the meeting. He said he himself will monitor the progress of Pilot Annual Preventive Health Checkup Programme. He also asked States to conduct Regional Board meetings of ESIC regularly so that the recommendations may be incorporated in the future meetings which will now be held four times a year.
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