Rashel Ahmed, a third-year student of the Geography and Environment department at Jahangirnagar University, has been suffering from severe gastroenterological complications for years.
Recently, he was admitted to a private hospital and has undergone surgery as recommended by his doctor. As his financial condition is not good, his batch mates raised a fund to cover the expenses.
Batch mate Yeasinur Arafat Bishal, who collected funds for his treatment, said, "It was not easy to collect a huge amount of money within a short time for his treatment. "We faced difficulties in collecting money for his treatment, " said Bishal. To make things easy, the university authorities launched a health insurance scheme for the students in November, 2023.
The scheme only covers the students in the academic session 2022-23, but it excludes students of other academic sessions.
Under the scheme, regular honours and masters students get treatment from listed hospitals, paying Tk 390 as premiums annually, according to the comptrollers office. Each student is eligible to get a maximum insurance benefit of Tk 1,20,000 per year for hospital admission.
In case of treatment at out patient department, the annual allocation is Tk 10,000 per student while Tk 2 lakh will be provided to the family in the case of death.
However, most of the students who are eligible to get the insurance coverage said that they were unaware of any such scheme.
Even though around five months of the academic session 2022-23 passed, no student got the coverage until now.
This correspondent interviewed several students of the academic year 2022-23 who are eligible to get the coverage, and most of them said that they were not aware of any such scheme.
The students who are aware said that they don know how to claim the benefit.
"Im not aware of any such health insurance scheme at our university. If it is offered, it will be an immense relief for us," said Salman Najafi, a first-year student of the Public Administration Department who is eligible to get the insurance coverage. Students in excluded batches expressed concern being left out.
Ayasha Siddika Bristy, a masters student of the History Department, said, "How did the authorities make such a decision? Are we not students of the university? If we are the students of the university, then the authorities have to include all other batches."
Echoing, leaders of Bangladesh Chhatra League, Bangladesh Jatiyatabadi Chatra Dal, Bangladesh Chhatra Union and Jahangirnagar Cultural Alliance, urged the university authorities to include all the students in the scheme.
They demanded launching awareness campaign for all the students.
Alif Mahmud, President of JU chapter of Chhatra Union (Alif-Emon faction), said, "The authorities did not take any visible measure to include all the students under the insurance coverage. They demonstrate indifference until are pressurised by stakeholders." "We urged the university authorities to include all the students as soon as possible," he said.
Bashir Alam, coordinating officer of the scheme and also a Deputy Comptroller of the university, said, "The health insurance cards for claiming insurance coverage are now yet ready. I will send letters to all departments and institutes to collect health insurance cards after approval from the higher authorities."
In response to the allegation of prolonging the process, he said, "I have no supporting staff to handle large scale insurance activities. If the authorities appoint staff, it will be easy for me to provide smooth service; otherwise, it will not be possible to do it," he said.
In December, 2023, the university authorities constituted a six-member committee headed by Mathematical and Physical Sciences Faculty Dean Prof Farid Ahmed to assess the prospects of including the excluded students as directed by the Syndicate.
Asked, Prof Farid Ahmed said, "We recommended providing insurance coverage to r the 52nd batch (Academic Session 2022-23) only. I cannot recall any further recommendations now." JU Registrar Md Abu Hasan said, "The committee has not submitted its report yet. So, the matter remains unsettled."
"We will take the needed steps so that students can get the coverage easily," he said.
