Workers of Accredited Social Health Activist demand saree as uniform as well as fixed salary.
The issue of identity crisis doesn’t seem to be limited to political leaders in the Narendra Modi government. It seems to be affecting grassroots-level workers in the state. In an interesting episode on Wednesday while the chief minister was felicitating sarpanchs of samaras gram panchayats, Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers put forth a demand for saree as their uniform so that they could have a unique identity, just like anganwadi workers. Along with this, they also demanded fixed salary.
After the chief minister addressed the sarpanch and panchayat members, the women started shouting to grab his attention. However, the police present at the event took the leader of the group outside the gallery.
Devyani Mahant, an ASHA worker from Isanpur village in Gandhinagar district, was surrounded by officers from district panchayat, policemen and Intelligence Bureau officials. Mahant, vice-president of the Bharatiya Majoor Sangh said, “I want to bring our demands to the notice of Modi Sarkar. There are more than 1,700 ASHA workers in our union and we want a fixed salary. We also want ‘saree’ as our uniform, like anganwadi workers.”
She further said, “We want this uniform so that we can be identified in the village and at the health centre. It will ease our access to facilities.”
District development officer of Gandhinagar MA Gandhi called her up and asked about the issue. Mahant claimed that she
had written about her demands to many officers
in the department, but she did not know that Gandhi was the highest-level officer in the Gandhinagar district panchayat.
Gandhi said that he had not received any application regarding such demands.
Later, the security personnel of state revenue minister Anandiben Patel took Mahant to her. The latter said that Patel told her she had done no good by speaking aggressively in the public event.
Meanwhile, some of the health department officials informed Mahant that ASHA workers are working under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) programme of the Union government and the state government is only implementing it according to the rules set by the Central government.
At the felicitation function, Modi handed over grants worth Rs10.86 crore to 422 village panchayats and talked about the effective implementation of Apno Taluka Vibrant Taluka (ATVT).
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