United Democratic Front MPs hold a protest in support of ASHA workers, demanding their honorarium to be raised to ₹21,000 and that they should receive ₹5 lakh as retirement benefits during the Budget Session, at Parliament House, in New Delhi on Tuesday.
| Photo Credit: ANI
The stalemate over the agitation for better remuneration by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and the one-upmanship between the Centre and the State government over who has done more for the ASHAs continued on Tuesday.
While Union Minister for Health J.P. Nadda said in Parliament that the Centre has given all that it owed Kerala and that there were no dues, Kerala Health Minister Veena George tabled papers in the State Assembly on Tuesday stating that Kerala has already filed the utilisation certificate and financial statements and reports till February 2025 with the Centre and that in 2023-24 the cash grant from the Centre had been zero.
More drama ensued by evening with the Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Tourism and Kerala’s lone BJP MP Suresh Gopi descending in front of the Secretariat and reiterating that the Centre has given all the funds that it should have given to Kerala and that it is up to the State government to produce the utility certificate, without which no further funds would be devolved.
Mr. Gopi said he was visiting the ASHAs to personally convey the message from the Centre that the Union government intended to increase the incentives of the ASHAs but that revising the employment terms of the ASHAs was not something that can happen in a jiffy.
Earlier in the Assembly, the discussion on the demand for grants for the Health department ended up with political overtones.
Opposition MLAs spoke about the acute shortage of human resource in the health sector, the inadequacy of the health Budget and the huge arrears that State owed public hospitals for providing free treatment to people. Ms. George’s speech was about the high-end facilities that were being developed in public hospitals.
Published – March 11, 2025 09:28 pm IST
