Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 29: With the sole objective to educate the stakeholders and make them aware of the Employees State Insurance (ESI) Scheme, a seminar on the subject was organised by the ESIC Regional office at Katra today.
President Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jammu Y V Sharma, who is also member of ESIC Regional Board while speaking on the occasion said that the Board has passed a proposal to establish an ESI dispensary, along with a branch office and staff quarters at Katra as the number of employees covered under the scheme in the area have reached over 1000 at Katra Station. Another proposal for establishing another ESI Dispensary at Udhampur is in the pipeline to provide better medical aid to the employees and their families at the district.
Regional Director, ESIC Arvind Kumar underscored various salient features and unique employee friendly features of the scheme such as eligibility for treatment of self and dependant family members for 90 days immediately after registration of an employee and on providing temporary I-Card to him by the employer. Under the scheme there is provision for grant of advance for treatment, super-specialty treatments, reimbursement of cost of treatment to employer or employee in case of treatment or employee in case of accident etc.
He pointed out that there is provision of cash compensation under the scheme in the State. For treatment, there are 9 ESI dispensaries, one ESI Hospital in the State and tie up with 17 reputed hospitals and Labs ( for tests) for the ailing employees. They included ASCOM Sidhra, Bee Enn General Hospital, Center for Sight , JK Lasers, Kalindi Nursing Home, Dr Lal Path Lab, M/s Gupta Hospital, Sudan Heart Care Centre, Triveni Nursing Home, M/s Trikuta CT Scan, and many other institutions. He said many employees are not aware of the empanelled hospitals. The ESIC has its main hospital at Bari Brahmana which provides quality treatment to the ailing private sector employees. The employees can get more details on official mobile No. 9419295822 in this regard. He said Smart Pehchan cards are being provided to the employees and teams of ESI would be deployed to this town to cover all the employees.
Dy Director, ESIC Sunil K Mehto also spoke on the occasion and explained provisions of ESI Act 1948, relating to contributions and consequences in default.