CHENNAI: When a sharp pain shot through his chest last week, Selvakumar (name changed) assumed the hardest part would be the treatment itself. It wasn’t. The real ordeal began when the private hospital treating him for an angiogram informed that his employer had not paid the health insurance premium. He had to bear the expenses himself.
A bus driver with the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), Selvakumar spent days borrowing money from relatives and friends to clear the hospital bills. Though he has since recovered, he fears a similar situation could arise again. “I now have to find a way to get the reimbursement and repay the loan amount,” he said.
Not just Selvakumar, employees across the state’s eight transport corporations have been affected by delays in the payment of health insurance premiums, said V Dayanandam, general secretary of the Arasanga Pokkuvarathu Uzhiyar Sangam-CITU. For the past five years, transport corporations paid a monthly health insurance premium of `300 per employee, Dayanandam said.
The scheme expired in March and has been replaced by a new one requiring an annual premium payment of `58 crore across the state instead of monthly instalments. However, the corporations are yet to make the payment under the new arrangement, he alleged.
Several MTC employees have postponed scheduled surgeries due to uncertainty over insurance coverage, Dayanandam said. He explained that the insurance premium is deducted from employees’ gross salary as part of their compensation package, and the corporations are expected to remit the amount to the insurer.
“It seems they are not paying the withheld money as intended,” he said. Dayanandam further claimed that while the state government provides funds for salaries, it releases only the net salary component instead of the gross salary. As a result, transport corporations are unable to pay EPF contributions, insurance premiums and other employee benefits, he alleged.
A senior MTC official said the pending insurance premiums had been paid a few days ago, and that the employees’ insurance coverage has since been restored.