The Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), sitting on agitation in the Kerala capital for better pay and retirement benefits, said they would begin an indefinite hunger strike after the talks with the state government failed.
Representatives of the protesting ASHAs, after being invited for talks for the first time in over a month, held two rounds of discussions, initially with top officials of the National Health Mission (NHM) and later with the health minister Veena George and other bureaucrats on Wednesday.
However, the ASHAs, following the meetings, said the talks did not yield a desirable result and resolved to begin the hunger strike on Thursday. The ASHAs have been demanding a hike in their monthly honorarium from the current ₹7,000 to ₹21,000 and a lumpsum retirement benefit of ₹5 lakh.
“The government just wanted to show that it held talks with us, nothing more. There were no meaningful discussions on our demands for hike in honorarium and retirement benefits. The health minister spoke about the financial distress of the government and asked us how it could suddenly approve a 300% hike in honorarium. The minister asked us to withdraw the protest for now,” said S Mini, a key leader of the ASHA workers association who attended the meeting.
“We will go ahead with the indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow (Thursday). There are lots of ASHAs who are open to sitting on hunger strike. We will not withdraw our protest until our demands are met,” she added.
{{/usCountry}}“We will go ahead with the indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow (Thursday). There are lots of ASHAs who are open to sitting on hunger strike. We will not withdraw our protest until our demands are met,” she added.
{{/usCountry}}Health minister Veena George told reporters after the meeting that she would meet her Union counterpart JP Nadda in Delhi in connection with the demands of the ASHAs.
“The State is not saying that the honorarium will not be hiked. They need to be hiked in due course as per the State’s limits. But when they demand a 300% hike in honorarium, we asked them to re-consider it in the democratic spirit. We heard their demands and we requested them to withdraw the protest for now. Kerala is a model state that has strived to improve the working conditions of ASHAs,” the minister said.
As evidence of the State’s efforts to end the protest, the minister pointed out the recent order of the health department in which it waived off the conditions that ASHAs needed to meet in order to get their fixed incentives of ₹3000 a month.