Govt to take a call on health cover for NREGs workers today

Continuing with its social sector agenda, the Union Cabinet is expected to consider a proposal to provide health insurance to all workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

Updated on: Apr 28, 2011, 24:55:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Continuing with its social sector agenda, the Union Cabinet is expected to consider a proposal to provide health insurance to all workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

The Cabinet will on Thursday consider a proposal to extent the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana to MGNREGS.

The scheme, as of now, is applicable only below the poverty line families. Under the scheme implemented in Public Private Partnership mode, 2.33 crore BPL families have already been enrolled.

Now, the government wants to extend the scheme to about 10 crore MGNREGS workers, who will have to pay a premium of R30 for getting health insurance cover of R30,000 per annum. The insurance is for existing and new diseases and also covers surgical costs.

The RSBY is different from other health insurance schemes as it covers the cause of pregnancy and provides for automatic cover to newborns till the policy is valid.

It provides cost of transportation to and fro from the empanelled hospitals, which includes private hospitals in each district.

The government officials say the final aim of the scheme is to provide a health insurance to all Indians for basic health facilities under the scheme.

The Cabinet will also consider proposed amendments to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, to check poaching.

Hindustan Times had reported in detail the proposed amendments which include manifold hike in penalty for killing endangered species of animals.

Another Environment ministry proposal of allowing World Bank to fund cleaning of River Ganga under the National Ganga River Basin Authority is also coming up for the Cabinet consideration.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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