New Delhi, Dec 24 (Agency) Union Minister of Labour, Employment, Forest, Environment and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav on Saturday said the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) has planned to fill 6,400 vacancies, including more than 2,000 doctors and teaching faculty to wipe out the manpower backlog. ESIC is also working towards providing skills-based training programme to the workers for paramedical jobs and has launched certificate courses in 10 disciplines, he said, while delivering the Second Graduation Day keynote address at the ESIC Medical College and Hospital in Chennai. He said “as part of the Union Government’s objective of modernisation of facilities under the ‘Nirman Se Shakti’ initiative, we are setting up 23 new 100 bedded hospitals across the country”. “We are also setting up over 60 dispensaries that will ensure delivery of quality medical care service to insured workers and their dependents in the vicinity of their residences.
The Union Government is ensuring that our services are available to a wider population. We are focused towards creating an infrastructure for easy access to medical services for our country’s workers, and ESIC itself has had a huge role to play in it”, the Union Minister said. Bhupendar Yadav said this ESIC Medical College has provided Out Patient Department (OPD) service for 5,76,329 beneficiaries with a daily average OPD Census of 2,153 since January this year. “Today, we are working towards Pan India coverage under ESIC and are constantly creating more infrastructure and capacities. We have introduced a cath lab at ESIC hospitals in three cities in India” he added. “As part of promoting preventative healthcare practices amongst the masses, the ESIC department has launched medical health checkups for 15 industrial clusters- this communicates a significant shift in approach”, he said, adding it is not the workers that visit the hospitals, but ESIC is now reaching out to the workers at their work places.