The State Government is planning to introduce a unique health insurance scheme for the benefit of government pensioners.
The state insurance director has been assigned with the task of studying similar schemes in vogue in other states, to be replicated or improvised as a model here, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy informed the Assembly on Tuesday.
The Chief Minister said a meeting of service organisations will be convened soon to fine tune the modalities of the scheme. Replying to T N Pratapan’s submission highlighting the plight of the pensioners and the need to provide succour in the autumn of their life, Chandy said that the services of the retired lot while they were in service were most valuable and certainly they need a better treatment.
But the daunting task before the government is the payment of huge amounts as pension which is really a heavy burden, he said.
“The liability of the state by virtue of pension in 2012-`13 is four times bigger when compared to 2001-`02 fiscal,’’ he said.
However, the government is quite aware of the issues confronting retired employees and the moves for devising a health insurance scheme is based on that, the Chief Minister said.