The legislator from Ranipur along with MP from Haridwar met union Labour minister Santosh Gangwar and union minister of state for Labour, Babul Supriyo in Delhi pressing the demand of long pending construction of Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) hospital. They also asked that measures be taken to solve the problems of pensioners under employee pension scheme. There is no ESIC hospital in the industrial area whereas contribution from employees and employers are deposited on regular basis.
Legislator from Ranipur, Adesh Chauhan said that they were given assurance by the ministers that construction of the hospital being sought would be started soon. Earlier a delegation of SIIDCUL Industrial Association along with legislator from Ranipur had met the state chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat in Dehradun and elicited focus on the problems faced by the industrialists since the inception of the industrial estate. The 600 industrial units established in SIIDCUL since 2005 with lakhs of workers are still crying for an ESIC hospital despite the fact that the land for the same had been allotted in the year 2011.
An industrialist requesting anonymity said that what could be the more absurd than this that two chief ministers have laid foundation stone for this ESIC hospital but the workers are still made to approach the private hospitals when in need of medical treatment. The industrialist alleged that the aligned and empanelled hospitals refused to treat workers because their huge amount of bills to the tune of crores had not been cleared yet by the state government.
Speaking to The Pioneer, president of SIIDCUL Industrial Association who led the delegation, Arun Saraswat said, “Five acres land had been allotted for the construction of the ESIC hospital in the year 2011 but the construction of the said hospital is yet to start. During the earlier meeting the chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, he had directed the chief secretary to find out from the agency the reason for delay and had also instructed to release funds to the hospitals on priority basis.”
On the new proposal made by the chief minister for five hospitals to be empanelled for ESIC, the association members have expressed their opposition stating that these were located far from the industrial area. “Five new hospitals including Arogyam and Maxwell were proposed by the government which we objected to since workers could not go to these distant locations for emergency treatments,” said Saraswat.
The local legislator Adesh Chauhan said that the meeting was positive and the union minister has also assured to form a committee to resolve the problems of pensioners soon.