Cashless treatment for accident victims on Gurgaon-Jaipur highway

New Delhi: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and insurance provider ICICI Lombard will offer cashless treatment to accident victims on the Gurgaon-Jaipur highway, said an official statement on Wednesday.

According to the plan, the ministry has signed an MoU with the insurance company to launch a pilot project for cashless treatment of road accident victims on the Gurgaon-Jaipur stretch of National Highway (NH) 8. "The idea is that no one may be deprived of immediate treatment for want of money for paying hospital bills. The panel of hospitals will include government and private hospitals," said the statement. While the ministry has created a corpus of Rs.20 crore for providing cashless treatment to road accident victims for the first 48 hours subject to a ceiling of Rs.30,000, ICICI Lombard will spend Rs.30 lakh as part of Corporate Social Responsibility. The pilot project is being launched to gain data and experience for rolling out a pan-India scheme aimed at providing immediate medical attention to accident victims, said officials. About 1.4 lakh people die in road accidents every year in India. The ministry will enroll a large number of volunteers on the identified stretch of NH-8, who will be trained to act as "first responders". The governments of Haryana and Rajasthan will be closely associated with the project. IANS