Help your driver, cook get health insurance

Here's your chance to be a good Samaritan for your cook, driver, your child's ayah or for that matter, even your regular vegetable vendor.

Here's your chance to be a good Samaritan for your cook, driver, your child's ayah or for that matter, even your regular vegetable vendor.

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Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and NGOs have been approached by the Delhi government to help enroll domestic helps, street vendors and hawkers under the Rashtriya Swastha Bima Yojana (RSBY) to provide free health insurance to them.

The smart card-based cashless health insurance offers R30,000 per annum cover for a family of five on a family floater basis. It will cover all pre-existing diseases and bear hospital expenses, including maternity benefits. The card will also enable beneficiaries to avail transportation cost of R100 per visit with an overall limit of R1,000 per annum.

The scheme, which has been extended to domestic workers, street vendors, railway porters, vendors and hawkers this year, was being implemented in Delhi for the last four years for workers in the unorganised sectors. The labour department will now implement the scheme in Delhi.

“It would be highly appreciated if you kindly provide the details of domestic workers in your residential area in the prescribed format,” said the letter from Delhi government deputy commissioners' office to various RWAs in the Capital.

Pankaj Agrawal, secretary of the RWA Joint Front, pointed out: “In view of the rising medical care costs, the vulnerable income group falls in debt trap otherwise. This is a good step.”

The National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) said Delhi has about 3 lakh vendors but they would face a problem vis-à-vis reach and accessibility. “It needs to be clear in which hospitals can the beneficiary take treatment. Experiences in other states shows that the labour department is not able to coordinate with health," said Vinod Simon, NASVI's Asia Programme manager.

Sadaf Farooq, coordinator of National Alliance for Social Security, said, “We have asked the chief minister to shift the scheme to the health department.”