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The Indian Staffing Federation (ISF), an apex body of flexi staffing industry in India, set up by leading staffing companies in India, today said that it opposed the Labour Ministry's decision to raise the salary cap of Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) beneficiaries to Rs 25,000 from the current Rs 15,000.
ISF in it statement said that as of 2012, ESIC was sitting on a corpus which is in excess of half the contribution of Rs 7070 crore. "That amounts to substantial fund to address the plaguing issues around inadequate doctors, poor diagnostic services and non-availability of common drugs. It is more critical to address the absolutely lack of faith in the institution of ESIC amongst the very people that the authorities are presumably trying to protect," it said.
According to ISF, an employee with gross salary of Rs 25000 works upto a Cost to Company Salary of approximately Rs 28000. This single move shall lead to an additional burden of Rs 1200 for employers for every employee with Gross Salary of Rs 25000 and decrease the net pay of the employee by Rs 450. The apex body of flexi staffing explained that given the uncertainty affecting industries, this single move is yet another step discouraging job creation and encouraging available work to be shifted to the informal sector.
"ISF acknowledges wholeheartedly that ESIC is one of a kind healthcare scheme in today’s world, however, ISF would like urge the ESIC authorities to take on greater accountability in making the scheme actually beneficial for all those they are attempting to protect by way of ease of access to basic healthcare facilities as and when they require completely doing away with their need to visit any other Private or Government Hospital or giving them the flexibility to choose the kind of healthcare they want for themselves," it said.
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Expected outcomes of raising salary cap for ESIC benefits: |
More jobs would move to the informal sector
Affect net pay of employees causing widespread dissatisfaction
Added financial burden on industries
Further increase to the unutilised ESIC corpus at the ESIC end
Little accountability taken by ESIC authorities towards improving the state of existing ESIC infrastructure, doctors and availability of proper care and medicines.
