ESIC relaxes eligibility norms for availing Covid-relief fund in case of death

The Employees’ State Insurance Corporation, on Saturday, relaxed the eligibility condition for availing Covid-relief fund in the case of death of an insured person by reducing the minimum contributory period from 70 to 30 days.

Further, three high-level committees have been formed for overall development of ESIC and improving its service delivery mechanism. A decision to this effect was taken at the 18th board meeting of ESIC on Saturday. The labour minister is the chairman of ESIC.

The labour ministry also kick-started a pilot programme for preventive annual health check-up for insured persons aged 40 years and above at four ESIC medical colleges or hospitals located at Ahmedabad, Faridabad, Hyderabad and Kolkata and based on the success of the pilot project it would be scaled up across India.


“This will benefit insured persons in early detection of diseases,” minister Yadav said, adding that all have to work with speed and even more diligence to ensure better social security for the workers of the country and their dependent families.

According to the labour ministry statement, minister Yadav called upon states to conduct regional board meetings regularly so that the recommendations may be incorporated in the future meetings of ESIC which will be held four times a year.

Further, the ESIC board approved the constitution of three high-powered committees under ESIC. These include a committee under minister of state for labour and employment Rameswar Teli on monitoring the infrastructure development of ESIC hospital and ensuring their completion in a time bound manner.

The other two committees are headed by labour secretary Sunil Barthwal for recruitment of best manpower at ESIC and other human related issues as well as a committee on information and technology (IT) for capacity building, artificial intelligence (AI), tele-medicine and online monitoring of procurement and dispensing of medicines.

All the above three committees will comprise members representing employees, mployers, state governments and ESIC officials, it said.