Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today called on Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and offered state's support to improve the medical services for workmen covered under the ESIC health insurance.
Maharashtra is probably the first state which has taken an initiative and come forth to discuss various issues related to health services being provided to formal sector workers under the ambit of Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) health insurance scheme.
After the meeting, Dattaterya said: "Regarding ESIC, we have taken a decision that all ESCI services will be taken over by ESIC and will run all the hospitals and dispensaries. But Chairman in the state of the scheme will be a state-level officer and the coordinator will be from the Centre."
He further said: "For this since states were not interested, we spoke with Fadnavis. He (Fadnavis) said he will put this issue before the state Cabinet and take a decision."
ESIC provides health services to over 80 lakh insured persons (IPs) in Maharashtra alone. ESIC has a about 2 crore IPs across the country. The corporation provides health services to over 10 crore people in the country as the family members of the IPs are also covered under the scheme.
