It would not have been possible without your support and encouragement! We launched our third Worker Assistance Centre in Pune, Maharashtra, last month (Dec22), after the first two in Haryana - Manesar, Gurugram (Dec2016) and Faridabad (Dec 2021).
Glimpses of the day
From 2016 until Covid lock-down, we were locating and assisting c.500 injured (crush injuries) workers a year. Now with these three centres, this number will increase to c.1,500 a year. c80% continue to be from the auto sector supply chain.
Glimpses of Panel discussion
This expansion from Haryana to Maharashtra is as per our strategy of following auto-sector hubs and will lead us next to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
In all these states, component suppliers of auto brands have thousands of workers losing their fingers every year in their factories - not only a loss to human ability, and to human dignity, but also a loss to Indian Labour Productivity.
Through these Worker Assistance Centres, we help these injured, often disabled, workers with their ESIC healthcare and compensation.
The Indian map here shows just a few stories of such injured workers we have found across India.
In the past six years in Haryana, we have assisted 5,000+ such injured workers in obtaining healthcare and compensations of value exceeding Rs 30 crores. Majority of them are for supply chain of Maruti-Suzuki, Hero Motors and Honda Motors.
In Pune, our new team, under the leadership of Amitesh Singh, who has moved to Pune with SII's ESIC expertise from Faridabad office, has already located 150+ injured workers mainly from the supplier base of Tata Motors, Mahindra and Bajaj.
Faridabad office is now being managed by Manjeet Chaudhary, with Masab Shamsi overseeing all these centres. Our on-the-ground committed worker outreach team of Jitendra Dabla, Narottam Jatav, Mukesh Tewari and Dinesh Rohidas Yadav go out every day to meet workers in their communities and ESIC facilities. Figure: Proportion of/ and the top 2 responsible OEMs in Pune (Aug22-Oct22).
At the Pune branch launch event, we had a panel or workers talking about their challenges with receiving ESIC healthcare and compensations services. Please see the video below, apologies for the shaky camera in parts, but the workers' message is clear that ESIC services need to improve in Maharashtra too:
Panel discussion video
Other speakers at the event also emphasized the role of Safe in India, and the potential to assist workers with ESIC. (Following translated from Hindi speeches).
Viru Gill, Director, Forbes Marshall: "We hope the success Safe in India has had in the past five years in Haryana will be replicated in Pune in a brief period so that workers can be helped not only in Pune but across India. We will support Safe in India in this ". He was accompanied by Ms Priti Kibe, Head of CSR, and Mr Harshvardhan Singh from Forbes Marshall, who also spoke to workers to understand their ESIC needs. Masab Shamsi, Head of Worker Assistance Centres, SII: "We work for you and with you, on ESIC and safety. We hope that you would continue to grace us with your continued cooperation and help us fulfil our purpose of being of assistance to workers"
Amitesh Kumar Singh, Pune Centre Coordinator, SII: "When I asked workers, how you got injured, they were more concerned about their ESIC hitlaabh and ESIC pension, than the injury itself, so we decided we should open centres and help these workers to know and get their rights"
Aaroshi Bidhuri, Social Media Executive, SII: "We want to create awareness among workers through edutainment and that's why we thought of making Gang of Shramikpur and we request you to share it to as many people as possible"
Sandeep Sachdeva, Co-Founder & CEO, SII: "Our Pune centre will be run on the same SII values: worker-centricity, solution-centricity, independent of any affiliations with any political party, union, religion, and caste. We will never charge any worker for our services. Every interaction of ours with workers should add value to them. Their time is more precious than ours"
Launch of Pune Worker Assistance Centre
We are grateful to have this opportunity to help an increasing number of injured workers, but the more injured workers we find, the stronger our resolution to prevent these accidents in the auto sector and take these lessons to other sectors.
For update on this accident-prevention effort, pls read this blog here on the release of our report on the Top 10 auto brands’ OSH policies – SafetyNiti2022. Our blog on release of CRUSHED22 will be published soon.
We thank the batch of IIMA91, Azim Premji Foundation, Vikram Lal Family Foundation, and now Forbes Marshall, and several others who are supporting us on this journey. They are our Wall of Supporters. Join hands to save hands and join our Wall of Supporters: Please donate here.
Stay Safe and have a fabulous New year.
team@safeinindia.org