AAP slams corporations for insurance ‘scam’

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj on Monday accused BJP-led North Delhi Municipal Corporation and its east counterpart of siphoning off crores of rupees taken from the corporation employees for medical insurance.

“The registration of not a single hospital was done for providing cashless medical facilities. The north corporation took Rs 221 crore from 34,000 employees for health insurance, while the east took crores. The employees are running from pillar to post for health insurance,” Bharadwaj alleged.

In a press conference, he stated that Delhi High Court had called it “cheating” and slammed the municipal corporations for not providing cashless facilities to the employees and also sought a response.

A few months ago, AAP had red-flagged that retired employees of the corporations, who had opted for cashless insurance scheme, were facing problems related to medical assistance.

Under this scheme, Group A employees gave Rs 1.2 lakh per person, Group B gave Rs 78,000 per person, Group C gave Rs 54,000 and Group D gave Rs 30,000. “The high court observed that the corporations have not yet registered any of the hospitals under the scheme. It means that despite taking money, they have not initiated the process, and it clearly shows that the corporations have done a corruption of Rs 221 crore,” Bharadwaj claimed.

Dismissing Bharadwaj’s claim, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said, due to Delhi government’s politically-motivated denial of outstanding funds to the municipal corporations, both serving and retired employees of the civic bodies were facing extreme hardship in receiving salary, pension and cashless health facilities. “The Arvind Kejriwal government is solely responsible for this situation,” Kapoor said, adding that cash crunch had resulted into retired employees being denied cashless medical facilities, as the corporations were unable to pay the private hospitals’ bills.

Source: The Times of India