Assam BOCW Welfare Board Medical Assistance

What is Assam BOCW Welfare Board Medical Assistance?

Assam BOCW Welfare Board Medical Assistance is a hospitalisation reimbursement run by the Assam Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board, the statutory board set up under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 and administered by the Labour Welfare Department through the Commissionerate of Labour, Assam.

According to the Commissionerate of Labour, the benefit is calculated per day of hospital stay: Rs 1,000 per day for the first 5 days hospitalised, plus Rs 200 for each remaining day, with a maximum of Rs 20,000. It is a cash reimbursement into the worker's bank account, not a cashless card, so the worker pays the hospital first and claims afterwards with bills.

The scheme exists because construction work in Assam is overwhelmingly informal. A mason, bar-bender, painter or helper on a daily wage has no employer-provided health cover, and a single week in hospital wipes out a month's earnings twice over; once in bills and once in lost wages. The Board's medical assistance is designed to blunt exactly that shock.

Funding comes from the 1 per cent construction cess levied on the cost of construction under the BOCW Cess Act, 1996 and collected from builders, contractors and government works departments. The Board's own portal records that over 7 lakh building and construction workers are registered as beneficiaries in Assam.

What the medical benefit covers in practice

• Inpatient hospitalisation for illness or injury, paid on a per-day basis.
• Critical illness and partial disability, paid separately at Rs 25,000 to Rs 1,50,000, with the higher slabs applying to conditions such as cancer and heart surgery.
• An annual health checkup worth Rs 5,000, once a year at any hospital, for members with continuous Fund membership.

Registered workers are also enrolled under the Prime Minister's insurance schemes through the Board, which carry death cover in the range of Rs 2,00,000 to Rs 4,00,000 along with disability benefits. Those are separate from medical reimbursement and are claimed on their own terms.

Who is eligible for BOCW medical assistance in Assam?

You are eligible if:

• You hold a valid ABOCWWB beneficiary registration on the date of hospitalisation.
• Your Fund subscription is paid up, with no default in contribution.
• You were admitted as an inpatient, the per-day formula presumes hospitalisation, so pure outpatient consultation does not qualify.
• You have original bills, receipts and a discharge summary naming you or your dependent family member.
• You have an Aadhaar-seeded bank account in your own name.

Registration with the Board, which must come first, is open to construction workers aged 18 to 55 with at least 90 days of construction work in the preceding 12 months, an active Aadhaar linked to a mobile number, an eShram UAN, and a current Assam address in the case of inter-state workers.

You cannot apply if:

• You are not a registered beneficiary of the Assam BOCW Welfare Board. The Board does not admit retrospective registration to cover a hospitalisation that has already happened.
• Your membership lapsed through unpaid subscription before the date of admission.
• You are an employer, contractor or establishment owner, or a supervisory or managerial employee outside the definition of a building worker under the 1996 Act.
• You are claiming for treatment already fully reimbursed by another source, since the Board's assistance is not meant to duplicate a payout you have already received.
• You have only outpatient prescriptions with no admission, since there are no hospitalised days to count.

Holding an eShram card alone does not make you eligible. Medical assistance flows from ABOCWWB beneficiary status specifically.

What documents are required?

Ask the hospital for the discharge summary before you leave the ward. Getting it issued weeks later, once the file has moved to records, is far harder and it is the one paper the claim cannot proceed without.

How to apply for BOCW medical assistance in Assam

1. Collect all original bills, money receipts, the discharge summary and the doctor's certificate from the hospital at the time of discharge, and keep photocopies of each.
2. Log in at abocwwb.assam.gov.in with your beneficiary credentials and the OTP sent to your Aadhaar-linked mobile number.
3. Open Schemes and Benefits, select Medical Assistance, and choose Apply for Claim under the E-Services menu.
4. Fill in the claim form with your beneficiary ID, the hospital name, the dates of admission and discharge, and the total number of hospitalised days.
5. Upload the scanned discharge summary, bills, doctor's certificate, Aadhaar and bank passbook.
6. Submit the claim and note the acknowledgement number, issued in the format ABOCW/123/2024/REG/00000008.
7. Produce the original documents at the District Labour Office if you are asked to, since the verifying officer normally checks originals against the uploaded scans before sanction.

To apply offline, take the same set of papers to the District Labour Office of your district or to a Common Service Centre listed under the CSCs menu on the Board's site, and ask for the medical assistance claim form. Get a written acknowledgement with a date stamp.

File the claim promptly after discharge. The Board's rules do not publish a uniform outer time limit for medical claims, and stale bills invite queries, so treat "as soon as you are back on your feet" as the working deadline. If the Apply for Claim page shows an "under maintenance" message, which has happened on the portal, use the District Labour Office route rather than a private agent.

How much money do I actually get?

The formula is per hospitalised day, with a hard ceiling:

The ceiling of Rs 20,000 applies however long the stay runs. Critical disease and partial disability claims are assessed separately on their own scale of Rs 25,000 to Rs 1,50,000, graded by the assessed percentage of disability, and conditions such as cancer and heart surgery fall at the higher end of that band. A worker who has been permanently disabled should also examine the Board's disability pension, which pays Rs 2,000 a month plus Rs 100 per year of service along with ex-gratia of up to Rs 3,00,000.

Sanctioned amounts are paid by Direct Benefit Transfer to the beneficiary's Aadhaar-seeded bank account.

How do I check my medical claim status?

1. Open abocwwb.assam.gov.in and use the Track Application tool.
2. Enter the acknowledgement number exactly in the format shown on the portal.
3. Read the stage displayed — submitted, under verification, sanctioned, or returned for correction.
4. If nothing changes for several weeks, call the Board helpdesk on 1800-345-3574 between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM with your acknowledgement number ready, or visit the District Labour Office.

Why medical assistance claims get rejected

• Membership lapsed on the date of admission because subscription was unpaid.
• No discharge summary, so the number of hospitalised days cannot be fixed.
• Photocopied or illegible bills submitted where originals were required.
• Bank account not Aadhaar-seeded, so the DBT credit fails and the sanction sits unpaid.
• Name mismatch across the registration card, Aadhaar and hospital records.
• Outpatient treatment only, with no admission to count.
• Claim filed long after discharge, inviting verification queries the worker can no longer answer with fresh records.

A returned claim is not a final refusal. Fix the defect named in the remark, attach what was missing, and refile through the same portal or office.

Where do I complain?

• ABOCWWB helpdesk: 1800-345-3574, open 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM, seven days a week.
• Grievance Registration under E-Services on abocwwb.assam.gov.in.
• District Labour Officer, the first authority to approach in person for a stuck or rejected claim.
• Commissionerate of Labour, Assam, Shram Bhawan, Guwahati: labour.commissioner@assam.gov.in.
• The central CPGRAMS public grievance portal if the departmental route fails.

Claiming is free. No official will ask for a fee or for your OTP, and no agent has the power to speed up a sanction.