Salary & exit incentive of ASHAs hiked

Bhubaneswar: Continuing to dispense largesse ahead of the twin elections in Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday announced a hike in the monthly remuneration of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) from Rs 4,500 to Rs 7,000.

The state has also increases the service termination incentive amount from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh.

While the decision will benefit 49,522 ASHAs, it will cost the state exchequer an additional Rs 1 48.57 crore annually, a CMO release said.

ASHA workers conduct home visits to educate and support pregnant women. “They have successfully created awareness about various government schemes meant for pregnant and postpartum women. In addition to this, they have been contributing to vaccination and institutional delivery as well,” the release added.

On February 29, the CM announced an increase in the monthly renumeration of Anganwadi workers from Rs 7,500 to Rs 10,000. The exit incentive of Rs 40,000 was also increased to Rs 1 lakh.

On March 2, the monthly remuneration of art instructors and sports teachers of upper primary schools as well as Physically Disabled Education Volunteers Education Volunteers (PHIEV) and multilingual education teachers was also increased. Two days later, the government hiked the monthly salary of Urdu teachers and Urdu resource teachers employed in Upper Primary (UP), Middle English (ME), and government fully-aided and newly-aided high schools of the state from Rs 7,400 to Rs 15,000.