<p>Bengaluru: Hundreds of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) on Friday gathered at Freedom Park for a protest demanding cancellation of new rationalisation rules and higher honoraria. </p>.<p>Following requests from ASHA workers to increase their honorarium, the department doubled the population assigned to each worker from 1,000 to 2,000. </p>.<p>Workers say the rationalisation will make over 7,000 workers of them unemployed. </p>.<p>The workers initially demanded an honorarium of Rs 15,000 but settled for Rs 10,000 after talks with the department. The state pays them an honorarium of Rs 5,000 while the Centre pays them performance-linked incentives. </p>.Health screening flags illness in nearly half of 699 pourakarmikas in Bengaluru.<p>The workers also want to be paid on a fixed date every month. “Like other government employees, we should get fixed salary on a fixed date. Everything else is getting higher except our salaries and we do not even know when we will get our salaries so we can plan our expenses,” said Usha K, an ASHA worker from Tumukuru. “It is already very difficult for us to cover 1,000 people. If they allot us 2,000 people, that will become impossible. This is just exploitation,” said Rekha S, another worker. </p>.<p>The ASHA workers warned of launching an indefinite strike if their demands are not met in the state budget to be presented on March 6. </p>.<p>D Nagalakshmi, state secretary of the AITUC-affiliated ASHA Union, said, “The demands are old but the protest is new. We have been requesting the same necessities for years but the government is neglecting us.” The workers also want a Rs 5-lakh retirement fund, a corpus fund to cover treatment expenses for workers suffering from serious illness, and a fixed monthly honorarium during the recovery period of three months for workers suffering from severe <br />illnesses. </p>
<p>Bengaluru: Hundreds of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) on Friday gathered at Freedom Park for a protest demanding cancellation of new rationalisation rules and higher honoraria. </p>.<p>Following requests from ASHA workers to increase their honorarium, the department doubled the population assigned to each worker from 1,000 to 2,000. </p>.<p>Workers say the rationalisation will make over 7,000 workers of them unemployed. </p>.<p>The workers initially demanded an honorarium of Rs 15,000 but settled for Rs 10,000 after talks with the department. The state pays them an honorarium of Rs 5,000 while the Centre pays them performance-linked incentives. </p>.Health screening flags illness in nearly half of 699 pourakarmikas in Bengaluru.<p>The workers also want to be paid on a fixed date every month. “Like other government employees, we should get fixed salary on a fixed date. Everything else is getting higher except our salaries and we do not even know when we will get our salaries so we can plan our expenses,” said Usha K, an ASHA worker from Tumukuru. “It is already very difficult for us to cover 1,000 people. If they allot us 2,000 people, that will become impossible. This is just exploitation,” said Rekha S, another worker. </p>.<p>The ASHA workers warned of launching an indefinite strike if their demands are not met in the state budget to be presented on March 6. </p>.<p>D Nagalakshmi, state secretary of the AITUC-affiliated ASHA Union, said, “The demands are old but the protest is new. We have been requesting the same necessities for years but the government is neglecting us.” The workers also want a Rs 5-lakh retirement fund, a corpus fund to cover treatment expenses for workers suffering from serious illness, and a fixed monthly honorarium during the recovery period of three months for workers suffering from severe <br />illnesses. </p>