The Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) medical college here is expected to start functioning in the coming academic year.
Its Coimbatore Director S. Vasudevan told The Hindu on Wednesday that 90 per cent of the works were over for the college, which is coming up on the premises of the 500-bed ESI Hospital here. The college would have 100 undergraduate seats. The ESI had opened seven colleges in other States. Works started here in 2009 and the amount spent so far was Rs. 468 crore.
The ESI had also acquired land at a cost of Rs. 12 crore for the construction of a 100-bed modern hospital at Tirupur.
It would be completed in two years, he said. The ESI had about four lakh people insured in this region, including Coimbatore, Erode, Tirupur, and the Nilgiris districts.
So far, 65 per cent of them were enrolled for the biometric smart card under Project Panchdeep.
The project aimed at computerisation of all the activities of the ESIC. All workers in the organised sector earning less than Rs. 15,000 a month were eligible for the ESI scheme.
