According to a draft notification issued by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, stakeholders have been given 30 days’ time for providing their feedback on the proposal to hike maternity benefit under the ESI insurance scheme after which the government would consider the feedback and take the final call.

The notification proposes to change Rule 56A of the Employees’ State Insurance (Central) Rules, 1950, substituting the words “rupees five thousand” with “rupees seven thousand five hundred”.

Under Rule 56A, an insured woman or an insured person in respect of his wife is paid ₹5,000 per case on account of confinement expenses.

The benefit is available in those cases where the confinement occurs at a place where necessary medical facilities under the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme are not available. The expenses are paid for two deliveries only.

In the meantime, government data shows that around 4.63 lakh new members joined the ESIC-run social security scheme in May 2020 as against 2.55 lakh subscribers in April this year.

As many as 8.21 lakh new members had joined the scheme run by the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) in March 2020, against 11.83 lakh subscribers in the previous month, according to the payroll data released in May.