ROURKELA: The regional board of Employees’ State Insurance Scheme (ESIC), after receiving fresh demands from different trade unions, has agreed to send a proposal to the Centre urging setting up of a medical college and hospital (MCH) under the ESIC here at Rourkela. The decision was taken at the 83rd meeting of the regional board of the ESIC convened under the chairmanship of Minister of State for Labour & ESI Srikanta Sahu in Bhubaneswar last week.
CITU’s national vice-president and regional board member of ESIC Bishnu Mohanty claimed the regional board comprising other union representatives including INTUC, HMS and BMS as members, senior state government officers as ex-officio members and ESIC authorities agreed to pursue the Centre for setting up an ESIC MCH at Rourkela.
“In 2009, Rourkela had come close to getting a 500-bed MCH under the ESIC at a cost of `700 crore with the effort of the then Sundargarh Lok Sabha member and former chief minister of Odisha Hemanand Biswal. As chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on labour, he had convinced the UPA-II government for an MCH of ESIC in Odisha with emphasis on Rourkela,” Mohanty informed.
The Odisha government during that time allotted land to Bhubaneswar for the same despite the city having a host of government and private hospitals. Meanwhile, western Odisha continued to suffer with lack of advanced and tertiary healthcare, he alleged.
The then union minister for labour and employment Oscar Fernandes had reportedly also laid the foundation stone for the proposed ESIC MCH at Rourkela on March 2, 2014, but the matter was dropped later.
Mohanty further said the leading industrial district of Sundargarh, adjacent Jharsuguda and Sambalpur districts have sufficient numbers of medically-deprived Insured Persons (IPs) adding, an MCH of the ESIC would benefit the entire western Odisha region.“We want that the pending proposal be revived and the MCH established in Rourkela. The state government should correct its past mistake this time,” he added.