The Indian Community Benevolent Forum (ICBF) is running a unique life insurance scheme for Indian expatriate community in collaboration with a local insurance company which gives insurance cover of QR100,000 against a premium of QR125 for two years.
“The insurance scheme is for all Indian expatriates residing in Qatar including workers, employees and families from 18 to 65 years old,” Vice-President of ICBF Mahesh Gowda told The Peninsula.
He said that the scheme designed specially for blue-collar workers by lowering the premium at minimum possible level so they can afford it.
The initiative aims at protecting the families of Indian expatriates, specially the low income workers, in case any unwanted incident, the insurance coverage will be a pretty good support for survival of their families.
“Over 600 Indian expatriates have taken the policy since the beginning of the registration on December 28, 2019,” said Gowda.
He said that the insurance scheme, running in collaboration with Damaan Islamic Insurance Company-Beema covers QR100,000 in case of death and upto QR100,000 in case of disability as per the disability percentage.
Speaking about the premium of insurance scheme, he said that it is just QR125 per person for two years and only copies of valid Qatari ID (QID) and passport is required from the applicants.
“We made it affordable for everybody because our main target are blue-collor workers whose families need financial support if anything happened to their breadwinners,” said Gowda.
He thanked Damaan Islamic Insurance Company-Beema for the support in this cause.
“Since Indian expatriate community is the largest community in Qatar, we are expected to enrol large number of people in the scheme soon,” said Gowda.
He said that the registration counters are available at two places - ICBF Help Desk in Embassy of India premises and Integrated Indian Community Centre (IICC) in Al Thumama.
ICBF also plans to launch nation-wide campaign to educate the benefices about the scheme and enrol them in it.
“We will visit labour camps and workers’ accommodations with the permission of companies and facilities owners to introduce the scheme,” said Gowda.
Speaking about the idea behind the scheme, he said that ICBF received many cases during past few years in which the families needed money for survival after death of their only breadwinner.
“ICBF has been working to turn the idea into a useful scheme for over a year under the supervision of Jutas Paul – Member of Management Committee at ICBF, In-charge for Insurance Scheme. Many meetings with stockholders MOU was signed with Damaan Islamic Insurance Company-Beema, the scheme was launched and the registration began on October 28, 2019,” said Gowda.
Members of Indian expatriate community have lauded the initiative describing it a boon for low income workers for providing social security to their families.
“The life insurance scheme of ICBF is an added value to the workmen compensation insurance which is mandatory in the country, giving extra layer of social security to the policiy holders,” said a prominent Indian businessmen, Qazi Niyaz.
He said that the scheme is unique because it provides a huge insurance cover with very little premium, encouraging everyone to take the policy.
Another Indian expatriate, Diwan Rashid Khan described the schme ‘insurance of the year’. I wanted to take the policy for my all family members.
Many low income workers who have taken the policy appreciated ICBF for launching the initiative.
Akula Ganesh, an Indian expatriate who is working as cleaner said: “This scheme is a really boon for people like us working in a small companies to safe guard ourselves from partial disability and in case of any accident.”
Another Indian expatriate, Gangareddy working as driver said: “Our company will cover only medical assistance and in case any thing happens to us at least our family will have some good benefit thanks to ICBF for their initiative for the community."
