Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) opened two dispensaries in the district on Thursday. It has expanded to Annur and Sarkarsamakulam.
Dispensaries
According to an official of the ESIC, with these, the corporation has 44 dispensaries in Coimbatore sub-region, which covers Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode and the Nilgiris District. This includes two mobile dispensaries.
Every year, the ESIC conducts a pre-implementation survey and identifies villages that have about 3,000 workers eligible for ESI benefits.
Rural areas
Already more than 200 such villages are covered under the ESI Act in the region. This year, 14 more revenue villages in the region will be covered under the ESI Act from November 1.
The workers in these villages will get all the ESI benefits – access to dispensary, treatment at the ESI Hospital or at hospitals that the ESIC had tied-up with, etc.
Doctors had been posted for the two new dispensaries and these would be operational from November 1.
The workers in the 14 villages would start submitting applications for insurance number from November 1, and this would be followed by biometric registration.
Workers
Already more than 70 per cent workers in the sub-region were covered under the biometric registration.
This is an on-going process and registrations will continue, he says.
