ASHA Workers Oppose Vaccination Drive of UP Govt Citing Unsettled Demands

Lucknow: To ensure substantial reach of the COVID-19 vaccine, the health department of Uttar Pradesh has decided to hold a massive vaccination drive this week. But the ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activist), who are responsible for spreading awareness on the vaccine drive, are reluctant to carry out the job due to lack of decent wages and compensation.

As per the state government's direction, the health department has coordinated with the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers and front-line workers for the drive to motivate the beneficiaries above the age of 60 years and those with co-morbidities falling within the age group of 45 to 60 years.

"The main objective of the Department is to ensure maximum reach of the Covid-19 vaccine as it will contain the further spread of the highly contagious COVID-19 virus," said Amit Mohan Prasad, Additional Chief Secretary (Health), Uttar Pradesh.

The ASHA workers and front-line workers will be moving from door-to-door to motivate the beneficiaries to get the doses of the vaccine administered. "Every village has a team of four ASHA workers, and along with Anganwadi workers, they are helming the vaccination drive in the villages and urban slums," the Additional Chief Secretary said.

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh Asha Workers’ Association is opposing the drive, saying that they won't participate in any such drive until their long-pending demand for decent wages and timely compensation has been met.

"We perform these Covid-19 duties in addition to ‌our ‌regular‌ work‌ ‌which‌ ‌includes‌ ‌assisting‌ ‌deliveries,‌ ‌immunisation‌ ‌drives,‌ ‌sterilisation‌ ‌camps‌ ‌and‌ ‌staffing‌ ‌the‌ PHCs. Despite the efforts, we have been putting into health awareness programme, we are not being paid a proper honorarium," the union alleged.

Reacting over the vaccination drive, Veena Gupta, the state president of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the Asha Karamchari Union, said, "The Central government has promised that an incentive of Rs 1000 per month is provisioned for ASHAs engaged in Covid19 response under the India Covid19 package for six months (March to August). But in Uttar Pradesh, we have been given the incentive for only four months. Two months of incentive was not given to us despite us working hard during the lockdown,” Gupta said, adding, “Our colleagues were attacked who had gone to the locality to conduct COVID-19 surveys. Even several ASHA workers died while containing the virus on COVID duty, However, insurance benefits were not provided to them and even now, they have been working door-to-door without any safety gear.”

Gupta said that a fixed monthly honorarium of Rs 12,000 should be given to ASHA workers. "The government has praised us as front-line warriors but the government has pushed us without any safety precautions onto the streets. Living or dying is up to us," she said.

She further added, "We have been getting feedback that people above age 60 are complaining of headache, fever and breathing problem after getting vaccinated. We will again put our life at risk and motivate senior citizens to get COVID vaccine but the government not ensure us for our security if in case we get infected.”

Likewise, Gorakhpur-based Chanda Yadav, who heads the All India ASHA Workers Union, said that in every block of Gorakhpur district, over 250 people are getting vaccine shots but the workers were not being paid for the work. “When we raised this issue, the district administration says no fund released by the government for this project," Yadav said, adding that the government made ASHA workers into bonded labourers. "Among others, we are doing multiple surveys apart from the ones that are not related to health. We start working as early as 8.30 am and finish by 9.30 pm, owing to the excess workload. But the government is not listening to our grievances and treating us as bonded labourers,” Yadav rued.

Hailing the grassroot work by ASHA workers, Yadav said that Uttar Pradesh's 1.6 lakh ASHAs tracked the migrant workers who had returned in two phases to the state -- 11.24 lakh in the first and 19.19 lakh in the second phase. "We not only identified the migrant workers in the state but also regularly followed up on their health status putting our life at risk, but this government never care about our health and safety,” she said.

Kusum Lata, an ASHA worker, accused the Yogi Adityanath-led UP government of “mistreating the Corona warriors.” She said, “The ASHA workers are playing a crucial role in the fight against Covid-19, but our basic demands are not being met.”

“Our work is incentive-based and the Yogi Adityanath government was paying an additional 70% to what the central government was paying, but they stopped it. We want the UP government to reinstate the withdrawn 70% incentive. The central government pays Rs 1,000 per month to Covid warriors, and as promised, the Yogi government owes us its 70% (Rs 750 per month), which both state and the Centre are not paying,” Kusum told Newsclick.