Dear Mr Anil Narayan
I agree with you that the exemption granted from ESI Scheme has always been illegal, improper and against all the norms. This was my experience as Director of Scheme in four different States from W.Bengal to Kerala. Please note that exemptions are granted by State Government and in Central sector by Central government and role of ESI department is only to give their comments. In almost all cases ESI department has objected to exemption based on comparative statements filed the employers. I have not seem a single case where exemption was eligible based on the statutory norms, since in none of the cases, including Central and State PSU or such good employers like TELCO had all the benefits comparable to ESI Scheme and whatever is eligible to regular workers, were not available for contract and casual employees. I know of KSEB where contract workers are working for years together and are not eligible to those benefits available to KSEB regular employees or benefits under ESI or EPF, flouting the Supreme court judgements. In fact all the difficulty and dangerous job like line shifting and laying lines are done by these contract employees. In fact exemption has been political or under suspected corrupt motives or such influece. For eg I know of one case where a PSU was fighting against ESIC for years together till Supreme Court on question of coverage and finally they lost the case and when arrears were due they filed for exemption and HC directed them to Government, as laid down in the act, and the Government in spite of strong written objection, granted exemption. DLO or even the Regional boards have no role in exemption but State government use them as shield. In many of the cooperative textile units in Kerala, exemption were granted denying employees the ESI benefits, when they were not even getting annual bonus or decent wages, since all these units were controlled by one or other political parties. At least recent amendment in law has restricted retrospective exemption.
In fact role of trade Union has been very disappointing whether it is exemption, demanding satisfactory benefits, or stopping child labour in Sivakasi ! The trade Union represented only the regular employees in well established companies and focused only on monetary benefits. I am not aware of any tade union agitation against the very poor primary medical care facilities under ESIC scheme in states like W.Bengal or Kerala, where trade union is known to be strong. The primary medical care in state like Kerala, West Bengal and Hindi belt continue to be extremely poor even though the workers are paying for it, and in many places the free primary care hospital of State Government is much better. I failed to understand why this situation when the ESIC has a huge surplus and over 12000 Crores are being spend to set up Medical colleges all over India, when setting up medical college is not the duty of ESIC.
Not withstanding many shortcomings and maladministration, I hold he view that ESIC scheme combined with EPF is two finest social security benefits comparable to the best in the world. What I expect from Trade Union is to ensure that all the workers including temporary, casual and contractor workers are brought under scheme as stipulated in law, force government to extend the scheme to new areas and new sectors and then fight locally to ensure that the committed benefits are available to workers at all times and in decent manner concentrating more on primary medical care, and fight against wasteful and needless expenditure and corruption.
O. Abdul Hameed
Formerly Addl.Commissiner ESIC
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