Bengaluru Anganwadi Workers Unrelenting After A Week Of Protest

Last updated on October 7th, 2023 at 05:58 am

Bengaluru: On this Monday the Anganwadis activists will complete a week of their protest. Do you know what it is about? The protest is about the state government of Andhra Pradesh preparing to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) in Anganwadis’.

In this protest, more than 30,000 workers of Anganwadi are protesting in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The workers are demanding pay hikes, retirement funds, the status of primary school teachers, etc. Which are their basic rights, But for a long time these poor laborers are agitating for their rights.

Let me tell you this is not the first time, they are on their 2^nd term of the strike in this year, in January 2023. The agitators announced an indefinite strike for the rights of their over 36,000 workers. They are saying that they will not end the strike till their wills will not be met.

Child development minister Halappa Acha heard their demands on January 19, 2023, when the workers and women protested for the first time for their demands, which were ignored by the state government.

This incident of vast protest started when the Department of School Education and Literacy said that they will implement the NEP soon. They said they will try to start NEP from early February of 2023-24.

Despite protests by most Anganwadi workers on the street in Bengaluru, they claimed that the government had not intervened yet and had not heard their demands of basic rights which they deserve.

But education ministry officials are saying that the issue is serious, as they cannot accede to the demands of the Anganwadi workers, as the state has primary school teachers who are far more qualified than the Anganwadi workers.

The statement given by the official of the educational ministry is -“Teachers are selected through a recruitment process and certain qualifications are required before becoming a primary school teacher. So the matter is further complicated. Anganwadi workers need a separate status based on their qualifications”

So Government is not in the mood to fulfill the dreams of protesters!