Accredited Social Health Activists' (ASHA) protest entered day 4 across the state on Monday for a minimum monthly wage of Rs. 12,000. The ASHAs working with BBMP demonstrated in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office in Bengaluru.
As proof that they had not received salary for the month of June yet, they held up their passbooks.
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Working on a paltry sum of Rs. 4,000 per month, the workers explained their woes. Among them are widows, wives of daily wage workers, tailors, and autodrivers. ASHAs have been the backbone of the state's Covid-19 fight with 1.68 crore households being surveyed by them to identify high-risk individuals, senior citizens, those with co-morbidities, ILI cases and pregnant and lactating women.
The house-to-house survey was even lauded by the Centre as one-of-its-kind in the country.
Despite their backbreaking grunt work, the salaries have been erratic, they say. 39-year-old Reshma Fathima, an ASHA from West Zone's Kamalanagar said, "I have only received Rs. 4,000 for the month of May from the state government. Out of the Rs. 2,000 incentive that I am supposed to receive from the Centre, I have received Rs. 500 only. Many of us are single parents. How do we run a household with children with this money?"
Fathima says ever since the first case of Covid-19 in the state in March, they have not had a minute's respite from work. They have no weekly offs and right from the crack of dawn, people start calling them asking about immunisation, where to take women for delivery etc. "We can't even sit down for lunch."
"We constantly get calls from nurses saying there's a Covid positive case, get the survey of building done or get the quarantined people hand-stamped etc," she said. Fathima has been an ASHA worker for six years now.
42-year-old Nagalakshmi, an ASHA with six years experience, working in the city's infamous Padarayanapura, one of the most badly hit areas by Covid-19 said, "We have only been getting masks and sanitisers. Four people in a team share two sanitisers. Previously, we used to get N95 masks which we used one each for 10 days, then we started using home-made cloth masks that we wash on our own with hot water.
They gave us triple layer masks, which we need to change twice or thrice a day considering the amount of work we do. We aren't given gloves home, we have to visit our respective PHCs every day to get a pair of gloves."
Despite their strike, she says, the workers have been getting calls from the public. "Families call us asking where to take their women for deliveries and routine injections. Apart from this, we used to go house-to-house explaining Covid-19 preventive measures. We worked 12 hours every day in the past three months," she said.
D Nagalakshmi, secretary of Karnataka State Samyukta ASHA Workers' Association, said, "ASHAs have appealed to the village, taluk, district and town panchayat officials in 30 districts of the state." Hanumesh G, Bangalore District Secretary, AIUTUC (All India United Trade Union Centre), said that since the DC GN Shivamurthy was in a video conference call with the CM, he did not meet the ASHAs but they have submitted a memorandum to his office.