Thiruvananthapuram: Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) in Kerala announced Friday that they were calling off their 265-day protest outside the state Secretariat. The decision came a day after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan increased their honorarium by Rs 1,000 to a monthly total of Rs 8,000.
The protest will end 1 November, the day when the state government is set to declare itself free of extreme poverty at a special session of the Legislative Assembly. Vijayan’s decision to announce the hike in their honorarium also came ahead of local body polls in a month.
“We achieved most of our demands, and our protest has led to many changes. So, we are going to end the protest outside the Secretariat today,” said A.A. Bindu, leader of the Kerala ASHA Health Workers Association (KAHWA), in Thiruvananthapuram.
“His (CM) latest announcement also shows that he agrees that our demands were rightful. Since this protest has happened, most of our demands have been met.”
Bindu said ASHA workers will continue their protests in districts until all their demands are met. She said the workers will hold a rally Saturday to pledge their commitment to future protests before the conclusion.
Hundreds of ASHA workers launched their protest outside the secretariat on 10 February, demanding a raise in their honorarium to Rs 21,000, a one-time retirement benefit of Rs 5 lakh, and the clearing of their pending dues.
Initially, the state government maintained that the hike in honorarium was a matter determined by the Central government and that Kerala was paying one of the highest rates to its workers.
But as the protests continued, the opposition Congress also raised it on multiple occasions to target the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), including during the crucial Nilambur bypoll this year, where the LDF eventually lost.
Bindu said the ruling LDF, which was initially reluctant to accommodate the protestors’ demands, later constituted a committee to study their issues, and now the chief minister himself has announced the increase in honorarium. She said Saturday’s rally will be inaugurated by the Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan.
She said a five-month honorarium was pending at the start of their protest, which has now been resolved, as they are receiving their monthly honorarium by the 5th of every month as per their demand.
The association leader also said the government has withdrawn the circular not to employ ASHA workers over 62 and that the government has issued a circular defining their roles and duties.
“Since we started our protest here, the ruling party and their unions said we should protest against the Central government. But our protest also put pressure on them. Union Minister Suresh Gopi and other MPs visited us, and we asked them to present this issue in Parliament,” she said.
“There were long discussions in both Houses of Parliament, which led to the announcement of a Rs 1,500 fixed incentive for us.”
She said the Centre had also decided to give Rs 60,000 when ASHAs retire from the job after five years of service.
ASHAs are community-based volunteers employed as part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), launched in 2005, to ensure the reach of health services to India’s rural population.
Kerala has over 26,000 ASHA workers, shows state government data. While the central government provides a fixed honorarium, the states provide their own top-up to these community-based healthcare workers. In July, the Centre said that it increased the fixed monthly incentive of ASHA workers from Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,500.
While Kerala’s honorarium stands at Rs 8,000 with the latest hike, data provided by the Minister of State (MoS) for Health and Family Welfare in the Lok Sabha in August 2024 shows that Sikkim has been paying the highest fixed honorarium of Rs 10,000 since 2022, followed by Andhra Pradesh, which provides the balance amount to match the total incentive of Rs 10,000 per month.
Among states paying ASHAs the lowest are Tamil Nadu, which only pays a non-communicable disease (NCD) screening incentive of Rs 500, and Odisha and Manipur, which pay Rs 1,000 as state honorarium per month.
(Edited by Suita Katyal)
Also Read: Set to declare itself extreme poverty-free by 1 Nov, how Kerala ensured ‘no family is left behind’