Asha, mid-day meal workers demand hike in emoluments

Amritsar, January 8

Mid-day meal workers, ASHA workers and facilitators of Amritsar district today handed over a charter of their demands to the Punjab Chief Minister through MLA Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh’s office. The members of the Manbhata Workers Joint Front, Mamata Sharma and Sarabjit Kaur Chhajalwadi said that the mid-day meal workers, ASHA workers and facilitators working in Punjab have been suffering from neglect for long and different governments have ignored their demand for justified wages and allowances for long, they pointed out.

“The Aam Aadmi Party, while in the opposition, had promised to double the honorarium of the workers before the 2022 Assembly elections. Unfortunately, during the last two years, there has been no increase in their alleged ‘insult allowance’ by the Bhagwant Maan government,” said Chhajalwadi. The union leaders said that if the demands of the honorarium workers are not settled by the Punjab government, a protest march will be held outside the Chief Minister’s residence at Sangrur on February 4.

The workers are demanding that the salary of honorarium workers (ASHA, mid-day meal and Anganwadi) should be paid according to the lower slab of the Sixth Pay Commission, at Rs 18,000 per month and the next slab should be fixed for ASHA facilitators with a mandatory increase of 20 per cent per annum. Their demands also include EPF of all the allowance workers and ESI deductions, free medical insurance of Rs 5 lakh and compassionate employment to a family member after death.