The Centre today said that the 50-bedded ESIC hospital here in the Assam capital would be upgraded to a 150-bedded super-speciality one in the coming days.
"As per the request of the Assam Chief Minister, we have decided to upgrade the 50-bedded ESIC hospital to a 150-bedded one as a super-speciality hospital," Union Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said at a press conference here.
He said there were 28 ESIC dispensaries in the Northeast at present and out of them 10 would be upgraded to six-bedded hospitals in future.
Talking about tea garden labourers, Dattatreya said the government would examine the proposal for inclusion of plantation workers under ESIC scheme.
The Centre has set a target to increase the number of ESIC beneficiaries from existing 2.1 crore to 3.5 crore in the next two years, besides increasing the number of districts from 393 to 687 across the country.
Talking about demonetisation, Dattatreya lauded the efforts of Assam government in opening bank accounts for tea garden workers for promoting cashless transactions.
He informed that bank accounts for 5.5 lakh tea garden workers out of 7.86 lakh registered labourers in the state have been opened since demonetisation on November 8 last year.
The remaining workers will be covered in the next 10 days, he added.
Dattatreya said post-demonetisation, the labour ministry has conducted 1,38,738 awareness camps nationwide and 42,29,472 new bank accounts have been opened for workers.
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