Dear Supporters of Safe-in-India
We are pleased to report our progress in the first quarter of 2018. Another solid quarter when: - We continued growing our ESIC activities and obtained Rs1.5 crore compensation (best ever and as much as the whole of 2017). - Analysed data collected and had some amazing insights into systemic problems with ESIC compliance in factories. - Drove systemic change efforts by escalating issue and recommendations to Director General ESIC and to the India’s Minister of Labour.
See a testimonial from Accha Lal, a 23 year old worker who lost his right eye in a factory accident on our youtube channel here We are now raising funding for FY18-19 and would be grateful for your support to help us continue our journey of helping India’s injured workers and improving safety for them: Donate here.
Highlights of 1Q18:
ESIC Performance:
Registered and helped another 169 injured workers of which 43% (44% last quarter) asked for compensation assistance. This conversion rate, now steady at 40%+, reflects our now established credibility among workers who have started coming back to us for help.
Obtained 69 new compensations (previous quarter 34) amounting to Rs 1.5 crore (as much as the whole of last year). We plan to help 1000+ workers and obtain more than Rs 5 crore compensation in FY2018-19.
Conducted ESIC Awareness and Registration Campaign in 11 villages in Gurgaon/Manesar. Provided ESIC and SII information to more than 4000 workers. This will help thousands of them to obtain better health and compensation services from ESIC for themselves and their families.
Experienced some dramatic aggressive resistance from a few local ESIC staff, but our team has been able to manage it and most of ESIC staff remain cooperative with us.
Impact Report
We have now helped more than 1100 injured workers with healthcare and/or compensations, which have exceeded Rs 3 crore in 18 months of operations.
Our Monthly Impact Report until Mar18 is here.
ESIC Systemic Change
In Feb18, we met the Labour Minister and DG ESIC to share our findings and recommend a number of systemic changes including introduction of a worker app for improving awareness, service levels and specific process reengineering ideas for pensions and leave payments. We will be progressing a number of these over 2018 with them.
Safety Agenda
We are in the final stages of recruiting a highly capable Head of Safety to progress our Safety-ideas from 3Q18 as planned. All the data we have collected until now will help drive our actions on prevention of accidents!
In our monthly worker support group meetings, we have started focus group discussions on safety.
ESIC Data Insights
In Mar18, we concluded a clean up and analysis of our ESIC data-base with the help of MBA-interns from SOIL Academy. Highlights: a) 74% of workers were ESIC-registered AFTER the date of joining v/s their rule of the day of joining! b) 57% of workers received their TIC (ESIC card needed to avail of the facilities) only AFTER the accident! c) 75% of workers were first taken to private hospitals and then to ESIC Hospitals despite the fact that in all these cases ESIC Hospital was nearer the location of accident! d) 43% of accidents happened during night shift of mid-night to 8am (one of three daily shifts)! These raise some serious issues and possible actions. That will be a subject of separate blog and recommendations to ESIC soon.
Infrastructure
Our Operating System, developed by one of our IIMA91 batch-mates is now under production and will go online in 2Q18. This will systemize our worker data capture, make it more robust, and easier and efficient to manage and report.
Improved website with pictures, youtube channel, better layout launched. See a testimonial from Accha Lal, a 23 year old worker who lost his right eye in a factory accident on our youtube channel here. Its humbling to see his positive smiling face after all the troubles he has gone through for two years since the accident. There are more testimonials, some hand-written, on our website here.
Thank you again from the Safe-in-India team and we look forward to your continued support. We are now raising funding for FY2018-19 and would appreciate your donations. Click here to donate and confirm at team@safeinindia.org.
Should you have any questions or suggestion, please write to team@safeinindia.org
Stay Safe!
The Safe-in-India team