The Awaz health insurance scheme, rolled out by the State government in 2017, has hit a roadblock in the district, thanks to guest labourers’ lack of awareness about claiming free insurance benefits after availing treatment at private hospitals.
Though the Labour Department claims to have enrolled 15,724 guest labourers, including transgender people, in the scheme in Kozhikode district, not a single medical claim has come to its consideration since the launch of the scheme.
The delay in identifying a competent agency as insurance service provider for the four-month-old scheme is said to be playing spoilsport. In the absence of such an agency, the department is now planning to directly handle such claims from individuals to be processed through the Labour Commissioner.
Though the direct submission of claims with substantiating hospital bills and discharge summary is an easy procedure, no insured guest labourer is seemingly aware of the process, thanks to the absence of proper publicity campaigns in their respective native languages.
District Labour Officer (Enforcement) Babu Kanappally said that the department had received only one enquiry in the last four months though messages on the scheme and the usage of bio-metric card had been widely circulated among job providers for their awareness.
“The first inquiry was from a guest labourer from the medical college side, but he is yet to submit the claim. We are planning to conduct a mass campaign to make the beneficiaries aware of the scheme,” he added.
Figures available with the department show that 1,55,595 guest labourers in the State possess bio-metric cards to claim free insurance benefits. Kozhikode district stands third in catering for the maximum number of beneficiaries after Ernakulam (26,194) and Thiruvananthapuram (21,162) districts.
Around 50% of the total targeted population have been covered in Kozhikode under the scheme. Officials point out that the initiative of the government that assures free treatment worth ₹15,000 to a labourer every year, apart from a death insurance coverage of ₹2 lakh, will be futile if they do not use it in the intended manner.
The delay in releasing the list of empanelled hospitals, other than government hospitals, is also dousing the spirit of many to avail the scheme.
Several card holders have already left for home in search of other jobs with the continuing slumber in the construction industry. Meanwhile, officials clarified that the list of empanelled hospitals could be released only at a later stage after identifying a service provider. An officer attached to the Labour Commissioner’s Office said that the cashless hospitalisation facility available at government hospitals had benefited hundreds of bio-metric card holders in the State.
The enrolment process is going on to cover the maximum number of guest labourers in the unorganised sector, he said, adding that a bio-metric card would also serve the purpose of an identity card. Apart from district-level service centres, regional camps are being conducted at the convenience of workers to issue them cards and to assure them better treatment benefits, he pointed out.
