BENGALURU: Soon medical assistance will cover not only the employed personnel but also the unemployed laborers too. The labour ministry plans to provide medical assistance to self-employed workers such as-auto rickshaw and taxi drivers, and rickshaw pullers, in an effort aimed at universalizing the coverage of benefits under its Employees' State Insurance scheme, according to indiatimes.com.

The employee’s state insurance (ESI) scheme will help all the unemployed and the self employed as well. This will also increase the now registered persons from 2 crore to 5 crore. Now the labour ministry is planning to launch a pilot project in November in Delhi and Hyderabad to extend the coverage of Employees' state Insurance Corporation (ESIC) to self-employed workers and only when the pan-India survey of insured persons is completed, the facility will be launched all across India from April next year.

However, the government is committed towards providing good quality medical facilities to all workers and is therefore planning to extend the coverage of ESI to benefit workers in the Northeast, establishments with less than 10 workers and self-employed workers like rickshaw pullers and auto and taxi drivers. Under this ESI scheme, the government provides full medical care to insured persons and to their families from the day they enter insurable employment.

Besides this, the scheme also provides  sickness benefits in cash at the rate of 70 percent of wages to the insured person for a maximum of 91 days in a year, 90 percent of the insured person's wage as disablement benefits, 90 percent as dependent benefit and up to 10,000 as funeral benefit to the dependents.

Read More: 7 Secrets Of Credit Cards That Mess Up Your Life Real Bad

States Will Have To Finance Loss-Making Discoms: FM Arun Jaitley