More than 72,000 Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) have decided to go on strike across Maharashtra on Tuesday to demand better pay for Covid duties. The health workers have refused to continue with Covid work unless their monetary incentive is increased.
ASHA workers are the backbone of the healthcare system in rural areas, servicing at least 72 health programmes. They have been conducting surveys to screen symptomatic Covid cases for the last one year.
Nashik-based ASHA worker Maya Bholap had complained that they have paid little and we work eight hours a day. Government is paying Rs 33 per day for Covid surveys. Apart from Covid-related work, their duties include prenatal and postnatal care, immunisation drives for children, population-based screening for disease surveillance among others. Demanding more safety measures, Bholap said the ASHAs are not provided PPE and the sanitisers were given last year.
Vinod Zodge from All India Trade Union Congress said they had demanded Rs 500 per day for Covid work. The entire workforce will go on a day’s strike on Tuesday and has decided to stop doing Covid duty from now.
Last month, the state government asked ASHAs to conduct RT-PCR and rapid antigen testing. After strong opposition from ASHAs, who said they neither knew the technical skill nor had personal protective equipment (PPE), the state government withdrew the directive. Multipurpose health workers and auxiliary nurse midwives have now been tasked to conduct Covid tests.
The ASHA workers said their regular health programmes took eight hours every day, and that the additional Covid work took up more time. .
The ASHA workforce has demanded that beds must be reserved for them and their families if they contract Covid-19 and need hospitalisation. Unions have also demanded free treatment.
Across Maharashtra, at least 570 ASHA workers have been infected with Covid-19. M A Patil from Maharashtra Rajya ASHA Gatpravatak Karamchari Kruti Samiti said the demands by ASHAs had been pending for a long time.