Wipro resolves technical bug on ESIC's portal

Last week,  Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), a health insurer under the ministry of labour and employment, had said that its portals are facing technical problems, causing inconvenience to users.

"The technical problem is completely resolved now, and the system is back to normal performance. The problem occurred due to a unique technical issue with the application software," Wipro Senior Vice President and Business Head (India, Middle East and Africa) Anand Sankaran said in a statement.

"We leveraged our global technical resources to identify and resolve the issue in the shortest possible time ... We are extremely proud to be a part of such a programme which touches the lives of a big section of our society and are absolutely committed to ensuring  the success of this implementation," he added.

In a public announcement, ESIC had said users were facing "serious issues" in using the portals due to technical problems.

"The portal was experiencing some technical problem because of which employers were having trouble accessing the application to generate their monthly contribution and register their employees," ESIC DG C S Kedar said.

The Rs 1,812-crore project 'Panchdeep' is aimed at improving the healthcare services provided to ESIC's customers through online facilities to employers and insured people for registration, payment of premiums and disbursement of cash benefits.

Wipro Infotech, the India and Middle East business of Wipro, had bagged the six-and-a-half-year project in March, 2009, under a competitive bidding tender that witnessed participation from TCS and Infosys.

ESIC is the implementing agency of a social security scheme that provides cover to over one crore industrial workers and their family members in India.

The project involved networking of 144 hospitals, 1,388 dispensaries, 620 branch offices, 40 regional offices and 27 state directorates.

Wipro was also mandated with setting up a centralised data centre and disaster recovery and computing infrastructure, besides providing services related to IT support and medical information system for all ESIC hospitals and dispensaries.

Under the contract, Wipro was to also provide IT solutions for HR, finance and general administration to increase organisational efficiency.