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CHAPTER XIV,
provide medical facilities. In addition, most Government establish-
ments make provision for the grant of leave with pay which can be utilised
when the worker is sick. A few employers make some provision for the
grant of sick pay and allowances, e.g., the Bihar and Orissa Government
stated in 1929 that in the Jharia and Raniganj coalfields, out of 214
working mines, 68 paid sickness allowances. Although the proportion of
workers serving private employers who are provided with sickness bene-
fits is extremely small, the (Government schemes have made the idea
fairly familiar in India. These schemes are non-contributory, but we
have no reason to believe that the collection by employers of reasonable
contributions from workers will be a matter of serious difficulty. Pursu-
ing this line, we proceed to give the outline of a possible scheme and
sommend it for examination.
A Tentative Scheme.
This scheme is based on the assumption that responsibility for
the medical and for the financial benefits will be separated. The former
could be undertaken by Government, possibly on a non-contributory
basis, and the latter through employers on the basis of contributions by
themselves and by the workers. In India, the extension of medical
facilities by the State offers advantages which are less likely to be secured
by a scheme of private medical service based on a system of insurance,
and the need of such extension is everywhere evident. It should not be
difficult to devise arrangements whereby such medical services as are
maintained by private employers may continue to operate in conjunction
with a State scheme. Public expenditure directed towards the assis-
bance of private schemes might in many cases produce more substantial
results than equivalent sums devoted directly to State provision. So far
as sick allowances are concerned, the employer might be required to
deduct a certain percentage of wages, to credit this to a fund, and to add
thereto contributions of an equivalent amount, or rather more in the case
of the more poorly paid. “Workers who had contributed to the fund for
a minimum period, e.g., one year, might, if certified as sick and likely
to remain so for more than a specified short period, be granted sick leave,
Provision might have to be made for some refund to those workers who
left employment after subscribing and before they had been covered by
the insurance for a reasonable period. The period of leave need not
bear a strict relation to the duration of the illness, but could be fixed on
some arbitrary lines, e.g., to begin with, a fortnight in some cases and a
month in others, and it would be subject to an absolute limit, e.g., one
month in any year. During the period of sickness, the worker would be
entitled to a proportion of his wages which would be paid from the fund
by the employer. In the initial stages it would be possible for the em-
ployer to appoint the medical officer who would grant certificates, but it
would be necessary to ensure that the employer was not in a position
to benefit from the accumulation of a balance in the fund. The super-
vision and audit of funds by the State would be necessary. After pro-
viding a suitable reserve for epidemics and other emergencies, the balance
could be devoted towards increasing the annual period of sick leave that