Vijayawada : Volunteers stage protest demanding hike in honorarium

Vijayawada : Village and ward volunteers, who have become a vital cog in implementing decentralised governance in Andhra Pradesh, have protested at various places in the State on Monday, demanding a pay hike. A few hundred volunteers protested in Vijayawada demanding a pay rise.

"We are only asking for our rights. We are not able to run our families...please increase our salaries. We are protesting here peacefully. Even during coronavirus time, we did a lot of work," said a woman volunteer at Vijayawada. She alleged that even as they are protesting peacefully, the police are resorting to violence.

Another woman volunteer said that the government took them under the village secretariat system on August 15, 2019 and Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy said volunteers are like his two eyes but now things are different now. "Now see the injustice happening to volunteers. Who is taking care of us? See how the police are beating us and pulling our hair. When we are doing so much work for the government, is this how they beat us?" she questioned.

They appealed to the government to think about them at least now. Likewise, another volunteer questioned Chief Minister as to how the volunteers could live on a salary of Rs 5,000 and highlighted the various expenses such as rents and others. The sudden protest seems to be a fallout of the pay hike the government gave recently to workers operating the newly launched rice door delivery vehicles.

"We go door to door and do a lot of work but are paid only Rs 5,000 while the just appointed rice door delivery workers are being paid Rs 21,000. The government should also think about us," a ward volunteer said. He said that the people who are entering data which the volunteers bring are being paid Rs 15,000 salary per month and observed that they do not go out in the sun but comfortably sit under the fan and enter data. He said that officials expect volunteers to finish work in just 10 minutes but are being paid a pittance.

Currently the volunteers are on leave as they have been taken off Panchayat election duty by a diktat from the State Election Commissioner Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar. They are expected to return to work on Wednesday.

Widely praised by several people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who appreciated Jagan and told him that the Central government was also thinking of replicating volunteer system across the country during a video conference with Chief Ministers once.

In fact, senior officials from Karnataka had also visited neighbouring Anantapur district to study the volunteer system and praised its model. Each volunteer is entrusted with the responsibility of catering to the governance needs of 50 families.

By setting up two village secretariats in villages, AP government has succeeded in penetrating its services deeper into the masses.

The village secretariats are also manned by nurses who played a stellar role in thermal scanning people during the time when coronavirus was rampant.

Besides checking the temperature and recommending a coronavirus test, the nurses are also visiting the homes of people to give them a tablet or two when needed, thereby reducing the need of villagers going all the way to a primary health centre (PHC).

"When coronavirus was rampant, ANM nurses, Asha workers and volunteers played a crucial role in identifying and quarantining positive cases," he added.