Anganwadi workers who thronged Mumbai’s Azad Maidan on Wednesday, had to wind up their protest today at 7.45pm after their meetings with ministers didn’t turn out fruitful.
On day 1 of the protest, they had a meeting with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde for 45 minutes till 10pm. On day 2, the women in pink saris, staged a massive protest at the venue, shouting slogans on which the police had restricted their movement by placing barricade, not allowing them to step outside Azad Maidan.
Later in the day, Anup Kumar Yadav, Principal Secretary of Women and Child Development agreed to have a meeting with the anganwadi workers representatives for 30 minutes, without any solution. Around 6.45pm, Girish Mahajan, Minister of Rural Development & Panchayat Raj of Maharashtra came to the venue for 25 minutes to assure every worker that the government is positive about gratuity, pension and honorarium demands. “But nothing has come to us as written from the government yet, we cannot trust the government on the basis of verbal promises,” said Shubha Shamim, President of Anganwadi Karmachari Sanghatana.
“The reason we have called off the protest at Azad Maidan is because our workers cannot afford to stay here, buy food thrice a day. The two days expense mounted to Rs 2.65k on tent, stage, stickers and banners, we cannot afford another days so we decided to go back to our homes. The protest and strike will be on in our respective districts,” added Ms Shamim.
During the meeting with the CM on Wednesday night, the anganwadi workers representatives raised their concerns over anganwadis not being treated equally as government employees, demands of gratuity, increase in remuneration, monthly pension, mobile phones, increase in the rent of anganwadis and increase in the price of food per child.
“Regarding the demand for salary increase, the Chief Minister took a completely negative stance and rejected the demand, so the negotiations were fruitless. According to the verdict given by the Supreme Court regarding gratuity, the remuneration received by the anganwadi employees for full-time work is the salary. He even rejected to increase food cost per child saying it is a central government’s scheme,” informed Ms. Shamim.
On pension, the CM agrees but on the condition of contributory pension, the amount is yet to be decided. “The Phones that were given to us in 2018, were of poor quality that it hangs every time we tried to upload documents on Poshan Tracker app. The CM dismisses these concerns as he doesn’t have to use them on a daily basis,” said Ms. Shamim.