Employees can breathe easy! Insurance scheme to cover over 20cr employees

Till now, Employees' State Insurance scheme or ESI was exclusive for the government employees working with the state governments and the central government. But now the labour ministry plans to extend the scheme to various unorganized sectors to make health and medicine more accessible to the public.

Soon, medical assistance would be provided to workers in small establishments and self-employed workers such as autorickshaw and taxi drivers, and rickshaw pullers.

Presently there are 2 crore people insured for the scheme. Once this gets active, there would be almost 5 crore insured people across India. This would benefit 20 crore people.

"The government is committed to provide good quality medical facilities to all workers and hence we are extending the coverage of ESI to benefit workers in the Northeast, establishments with less than 10 workers and self-employed workers like rickshaw pullers and auto and taxi drivers," said labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya.

According to Dattatreya, labour ministry will launch a pilot project in November in Delhi and Hyderabad to extend the coverage of ESIC to self-employed workers and once the pan-India survey of insured persons is completed, the facility will be launched across India from April next year.

ESIC Act applies to premises or precincts where 10 or more persons are employed. The employees drawing wages up to Rs 15,000 a month are entitled to health insurance cover and other benefits under the Act.

Under the ESI scheme, the government provides full medical care to insured persons and their families from the day they enter insurable employment, with no ceiling on the treatment.