The Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) Wednesday launched its IT-enabled services to facilitate online service delivery for its members.

The minister of state for labour and employment, Chandrasekhar Sahu, and director general of ESIC Ramesh Inder Singh launched the portal at a ceremony here.

"The launching of the project completes a long cherished dream of the ESIC to go online. All manual operations in the running of the scheme will be substituted by computerised operations," said the minister.

Listing the initiatives taken by ESIC for the welfare of beneficiaries, he said that the wage ceiling for coverage of scheme has been increased from Rs.7,500 to Rs.10,000 with effect from Oct 1.

He said the ceiling of medical expenditure has also been increased from Rs.750 to Rs. 900 per annum per insured person.

"It is ESIC's endeavour to serve employers in a speedier manner and the launching of the pilot project is to be seen as a part of the efforts of ESIC in that direction," the minister added.

Live demonstrations of how the services will take place online were shown to the gathering.

"The pilot project will primarily provide registration of employers and employees, payment of insurance premium, payment of all cash based benefits and facilitation of medical care of insured persons by linking dispensaries and hospitals and electronically confirming the eligibility of the insured persons," said Singh.

"Our going online will bring in more transparency and efficiency in our delivery of services. It will benefit almost four million beneficiaries in Delhi and Haryana," he added.

Under the pilot project, online services will be initially available in Delhi and Haryana. For the rest of the country the services will be implemented during the second phase.

ESIC is India's single largest health care provider, covering over 35 million people. It provides the services through a network of 144 hospitals, 42 annexes and 1,427 dispensaries.