Anganwadi workers gear up for nationwide stir

Tribune News Service
Bathinda, November 17

Members of the All Punjab Anganwadi Mulazam Union (Malwa) conducted a meeting at Teachers' Home here on Saturday. 

The objective of the meeting was to review the preparations ahead of a nationwide protest by the Anganwadi Employees' Federation of India on December 3. 

Members of the unions from different districts were assigned tasks for the upcoming nationwide protest.

Hargobind Kaur, president of the union, said, “The successive Union Governments have meted out a step-motherly treatment to anganwadi workers for the past four decades. We have been demanding regular government jobs, to no avail. So time and again, we were forced to hold protests. Anganwadi workers must be accorded the status of nursery teachers and helpers must be given the status of class IV employee.” 

She said, "We have been agitating for a long time now for our genuine demands. But instead of resolving the issues, the state government was trying to suppress our voice by force in the past."

She demanded that the anganwadi workers and helpers should be given allowances on the lines of Haryana. 

She said the state government should also send children aged between 3 and 6 years back to anganwadi centres from the government schools.