With the intention
to protect the interest of workers in contingencies such as sickness,
maternity, temporary or permanent physical disablement and death due to
employment injury resulting in loss of wages or earning capacity the
government promulgated Employees State Insurance Act, 1948. The Act guarantees
reasonably good medical care to workers and their immediate dependants. The
scheme of ESI, which was first implemented in
Kanpur
and
Delhi,
is administered through Employees State Insurance Corporation.
The ESI scheme
provides six social security benefits to employees: Medical benefit,
sickness benefit, maternity benefit, disablement benefit, dependant’s benefit and funeral expenses. In addition to
these benefits, the insured workers get certain other benefits as well.
At first, this Act applied only to non-seasonal factories using power that
employed 20 or more persons. Today, it includes non-seasonal power using
factories employing 10 or more persons as well as non-power using factories
that have 20 or more persons as employees. The scope of the ESI Scheme has
also been broadened to include shops, cinemas, hotels, restaurants,
newspaper establishments and road motor transport undertakings that employ
20 or more persons. The wage-limit for coverage, according to the Act is
Rs.10,000/- per month.
Other Health Schemes of the
Government
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