The Central government has not been providing funds for wages for various scheme workers, including anganwadi, ASHA and school noon meal scheme workers, in a timely manner, Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal said, in response to a calling attention motion moved by T.P. Ramakrishnan, MLA, in the Assembly on Monday. He said that the State government has been providing advance payments from its funds to ensure that workers do not suffer due to non disbursement of their wages on time. The government will also seek an increase in wages for the various scheme workers, he added.
Mr. Balagopal said that the State has 26,448 ASHA workers who are being provided ₹2,000 as monthly incentive. The State government provides an honorarium of ₹6,000. In addition, the workers get incentives through various National Health Mission schemes. The Finance department cleared ₹184.34 crore in February to provide honorarium in advance for ASHA workers, in view of the delay in disbursement of wages from the Central government. For the noon meal scheme workers, only the first instalment of wages from the Centre has been made available till now. Although this has caused financial difficulties, the State has cleared its own share of honorarium in advance.
The Minister also spoke about the delay in disbursement of wages for National AYUSH Mission, Creche, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and National health Mission workers. He said that a continuation of this trend would cause huge financial difficulties for the State government as well as the workers in the future.
.JPG "Illegal overfishing adds to concerns of fish stock depletion in Vembanad Lake")
