ESIC wants big claimants to share payout burden in Bengal

KOLKATA: The Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) in West Bengal has done a historic first. In all its 48 years, this is the first time it has asked companies reporting high sickness and temporary disablement, to bear a portion of the expenses that the corporation incurs for the upkeep of their employees.

The move is legitimate, since Section 69 of the ESI Act empowers the corporation to ask companies to share a portion of the expenditure that it incurs for their employees, in cases of where an abnormally large number of claims is made regularly.

Under the ESI scheme, employees who lodge their claims are provided cash, for sickness or temporary disablement. ESIC has already started shooting off show-cause notices to such companies, especially jute mills, where such reported cases are much higher than the state average.

Talking to ET in this regard, BK Sahu, regional director, ESIC said: “The average incidence of sickness in West Bengal is 3.31 per unit per month against the national average of 1.56. Accidents reported in West Bengal are 1.85 per unit per month against the national average of 0.46.

The expenditure per person here, therefore, is about Rs 1,000 against a national average of Rs 361. This gives us enough reason to believe that a large number of claims filed here are not genuine.” “We have, therefore, started asking several such companies with incidences higher than the state average, to share a portion of our expenditure on their employees to whom we dole out cash benefits,” Mr Sahu said.

What is worse, Mr Sahu said, is the fact that such incidents in jute mills are far higher than in any other company. “Jute mills from Telengipara have reported as high as 7.18 cases of accidents on average, while sickness reported was about 13.27”, Mr Sahu said.

Jute mills in areas like Badiyabati, Bali, Bansberia, Burikhali, Sankrail Howrah Maidan, Bauria, and Rishra also report very high cases of such incidents. “We have reasons to believe that majority of workers in the state are inclined towards receiving cash benefits.

ESIC spends about 45-47% of its total premium income of Rs 159 crore per annum to provide cash benefits that aggregate to about Rs 6.5 crore a month. As much as 90% of this is claimed by jute mill workers,” he added.

Henceforth, ESIC will regularly tally the number of claims received with accidents reported with the chief inspector of accidents. “We may initiate actions in case there are large differences in the number of accidents reported by a company to the chief inspector and the ones reported to us,” he added.

Sources at ESIC said ‘badli workers’ or temporary labourers were the ones which exploit the system to receive cash. This has turned to be one of their prime source of income at times when they do not have work, the source said.