Shabir Khan
Workers from ASHA staged a protest in the Sopore area of Kashmir, demanding special incentives and higher pay.
Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) staff staged a protest against the government in Sopore, demanding special financial incentives and better pay amid the raging coronavirus crisis.
“The government has provided incentives for all kinds of medical staff like doctors, nursing, paramedical staff and drivers but we ASHA workers who are also at the frontline during this pandemic are left out of these benefits,” an ASHA worker Laila said.
She said that the Asha workers had been working for free for many months. “The administration started paying us 1000 a month. After which in 2019, our salary was increased to 2000 a month. We demand that our salaries should be increased,”
“We work at ground level to help identify the COVID patients and information related to it during the pandemic,” Laila said. We are working on minimum wages and appeal to the government to include us in the special financial incentives list.
While staging the protest, the workers said that they will stop working if their wages are not increased.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in March last year, the ASHA workers have been fighting covid 19 on the frontline.
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s, ASHA workers have been assigned to monitor the situation locally in order to control the spread of the covid 19.
These women are employed to conduct daily visits to houses, report symptomatic cases, assigned the task of identification of contacts of confirmed and suspected cases, monitor contacts daily, create awareness among the community and counsel families regarding disease prevention and the like.