ROURKELA: A mass movement is brewing in Rourkela over the demand for establishment of the proposed Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) medical college and hospital in the steel city.

This comes amid unconfirmed reports that the ESIC, under the Union Ministry for Labour and Employment, is moving ahead with the plan to establish a 500-bed MCH at Bhubaneswar.

All eyes are now fixed on the outcome of the upcoming meeting between Sundargarh MP and Union Minister Jual Oram with Union Labour and Employment Minister Mansukh Mandaviya. In a letter to Mandaviya on January 12, Oram had sought a personal meeting with him to present official data and push for a formal declaration of the ESIC MCH at Rourkela.

Incidentally, even as the ongoing agitation of the ESIC action committee over the demand entered 18th day on Friday, the CITU has announced to intensify the agitation involving different political parties, trade unions and voluntary outfits. Plans are afoot to effect a shutdown in Rourkela in the second week of February.

CITU’s national vice-president and ESIC’s regional board member Bishnu Mohanty said, “We have no problem if an ESIC MCH is set up in Bhubaneswar which is already saturated with health facilities. But it should not be at the cost of the most deserving location Rourkela.”

He claimed that Sundargarh, Keonjhar, Jharsuguda and Sambalpur districts in western Odisha have the most number of industries and together have around 2.5 lakh insured persons (IPs) including 1.49 lakh in Sundargarh. Once mining sector workers come under the fold of ESIC, the number of IPs would rise to around six lakh in the region.

Mohanty claimed since the first announcement for ESIC MCH in Odisha was made in 2009 and cancelled in 2014, the IPs of the region have suffered heavily with no access to quality and advanced healthcare.

CITU’s Odisha unit vice-president Jehangir Ali said earlier in 2011, former chief minister and then Sundargarh MP Hemanand Biswal, while leading the parliamentary standing committee on labour, had earmarked land at Balughat and Kuarmunda for the ESIC MCH. “Then too, both the central and state governments had wrongfully finalised Bhubaneswar ignoring the interests of the workers of this region. But it would not be tolerated now,” he warned.

In March 2014, then Union Labour and Employment Minister Oscar Fernandes had laid the foundation for the ESIC MCH at Jagannathprasad in Bhubaneswar. However, the project was later shelved.