Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Sept 21: The State Government is working on a comprehensive Social Security Network that will club all welfare schemes to provide maximum benefit to all kinds of Workers with of special emphasis on private sector.
This was stated by Finance Minister Dr Haseeb A Drabu at the 15th meeting of Employees States Insurance Corporation (ESIC) Regional Board.
“We have number of schemes that often run parallel overlapping each other. The primary aim of all such schemes is to benefit the workers. We propose to club all such schemes,” the Finance Minister said. “This will take care of all needs like insurance, health care and other facilities for all kind of workers many of whom are working outside the Government sector”, he further elaborated.
The Finance Minister ordered expediting of work on all projects under ESIC. “To take care of lack of staff in medical institutions run by ESIC, we will go for a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model,” the Finance Minister said. “We will build facilities and offer the same to a group of doctors or some major private healthcare groups. This way the employees will get quality healthcare facilities and the role of Government will be limited to just being a regulator”, he added
The Finance Minister said that there is an immense need for creating a pool of doctor entrepreneurs and PPP model will help to boost the sector by providing the required logistic support and other related things..
He ordered the fast tracking of 100 bed hospital to be established by ESIC at Ompora on 40 kanals of land and creating a Model Dispensary and Diagnostic Centre at Lassipora.
The meeting also approved the establishing of new dispensaries at Gulmarg, Pahalgam, Sangam, Ramban, Kishtwar, Rajouri and other areas where the number of industrial workers is around 1000. The meeting proposed to look into the ways to increase the ambit of coverage from cluster level to project or district level.
Arvind Kumar, Regional Director ESIC while briefing the Minister about the scheme said that over one lakh industrial employees in the state are covered under the scheme. “Under the scheme an industrial worker gets health cover with no limit on expenditure. The scheme takes care of the family members of the workers too,” said Kumar. “In this scheme the employees and employers have to pay around 6.5 percent and rest of expenditure is borne by us, he added.
The meeting was also attended by, Commissioner/ Secretary, Labour and Employment, Shalindra Kumar who said that a meeting with Union Labour Commission would soon be held to expedite working of ESIC schemes in the State.
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