Chandrapur Anganwadi Workers Report Irregular Honorarium Payments

thenewsdirt
2 days ago
6 min read

Anganwadi workers in Chandrapur district are confronted with a persistent problem that undermines their financial stability and professional commitment.

The regular receipt of honorarium payments remains inconsistent, creating hardship for women whose monthly earnings are already inadequate to meet basic living costs.

The situation extends beyond simple delays in payment, encompassing a complex web of administrative gaps that affects the compensation structure of these essential rural workers across Vidarbha.

The honorarium system for Anganwadi workers comprises multiple components intended to provide a complete monthly remuneration.

Workers at main centres receive a base honorarium of Rs 4,500 from the central government, supplemented by state-level additional payments that bring their total to approximately Rs 11,500 per month in Chandrapur. Mini centre workers receive Rs 6,500, while helpers earn around Rs 4,839 monthly.

This structure, however, presents a significant problem. The irregular arrival of payments, combined with non-receipt of various allowances and reimbursements, means that workers frequently do not receive their full due compensation within expected timeframes.

Operational and Financial Burdens

The financial pressure is accentuated by the reality that workers must manage centre operations with grossly insufficient allocations.

The Rs 8 daily nutrition grant per child is intended to provide fresh, prepared meals, including items such as khichdi, boiled sprouts, daliya, and supplementary snacks.

However, with gas cylinders costing Rs 1,100 monthly and spices requiring additional purchase, this amount becomes impossible to manage. Workers in districts like Nanded have reported receiving only Rs 52 daily to feed 80 children, yet they are compelled to ensure adequate nutrition. They manage this by personally subsidising food expenses, an arrangement that effectively reduces their already meagre hourly earnings.

The situation across Vidarbha reflects broader systemic failures in payment administration. In 2024, when Maharashtra Anganwadi workers launched protests seeking better working conditions and permanent employment status, the resulting strike led to the closure of 95 per cent of operational centres.

During this period, workers lost an entire month's salary in December 2023 due to strike participation. More concerning, the government responded with termination notices and show-cause letters rather than addressing underlying grievances.

Two hundred workers in Amravati district received termination orders, while hundreds in other districts were threatened with service termination if they did not abandon strike activities. The state did not address the core issues that sparked the strike, including irregular payment practices.

The psychological and physical toll of this financial instability is documented through the experiences of workers themselves. Women running Anganwadis often come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Selection criteria mandate preference for widowed women, destitute women, and workers from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward communities.

These women frequently have no alternative income sources and depend entirely on their Anganwadi honourarium. When payments arrive irregularly, they face immediate household crises.

Reports from 2024 documented cases where workers reopened centres in violation of strike directives simply because their households lacked food. One worker broke down before her colleagues and revealed empty food storage bins in her kitchen, illustrating the severity of hardship created by payment irregularities.

Structural and Administrative Gaps

The compensation structure itself fails to account for inflation and changing economic realities.

The last significant salary revision for Maharashtra workers occurred in 2018, when the central government enhanced honorarium for Anganwadi workers.

Since then, inflation in India has averaged approximately 6 per cent annually, yet worker compensation has not increased proportionally. Annual increments and bonuses that regular government employees receive are absent from the Anganwadi framework.

After 12 years of service, a worker in Vidarbha still earns Rs 10,530 per month. The limited increments that have been introduced require workers to complete 10, 20, or 30 years to receive increases of 3, 4, or 5 per cent, respectively.

This structure means that newer workers experience severe financial hardship during their initial years of employment.

The administrative structure creates opportunities for further delays beyond simple payment timing. Workers must submit monthly progress reports (MPR) twice monthly at meetings held at Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) offices. If data is not submitted before the 5th of each month, the administrative system suspends salary processing for that month. The pressure to meet these deadlines means workers must maintain extensive record-keeping systems.

They maintain 11 different registers recording various aspects of their work. Registers themselves cost Rs 200 to Rs 250 each. The digital conversion of record-keeping has created additional burdens, with workers previously provided with smartphones containing only 2 GB RAM, insufficient for the required data management tasks. When these devices failed, workers were compelled to purchase smartphones from their personal funds to continue meeting data submission requirements.

The cost of operating Anganwadi centres falls substantially on the workers themselves, despite these being government-supported facilities.

Workers report spending personal funds on register purchases, repair of weighing scales, collection of foodgrains from government distribution centres at considerable distances, and acquisition of supplies when government allocations prove insufficient.

The expectation involved providing tea and snacks to 30 to 40 participants, yet reimbursements for these meetings required 6 to 8 months to process. The workers managed these expenses by deferring payments or borrowing money, creating an additional financial burden.

Ongoing Issues and Retirement Challenges

In Chandrapur specifically, the announcement of recruitment for 31 Anganwadi helper positions in 2025 suggests ongoing vacancies, a situation that prevents expansion of services and indicates that existing workers absorb additional responsibilities without corresponding compensation increases.

The district experienced an eight-year period without revision to the nutrition rate provided for supplementary feeding, a stagnation that particularly burdens workers required to maintain standards with inadequate resources.

The situation persists despite multiple government announcements and schemes. In September 2024, an announcement was made regarding an increased honorarium from Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per month for Maharashtra workers.

Subsequently, in 2025, revised salary structures were announced effective from various dates, including announcements of September salary increases and January 2026 revisions. However, workers report that actual receipt of these revised amounts has not materialised uniformly or on schedule. Some workers continue to receive reduced payments or face freezes on honorarium disbursement.

The gap between announcement and implementation remains a critical problem affecting worker compensation.

The irregularity in payment directly contravenes the intended purpose of Anganwadi services, which operate as foundational components of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme launched in 1975.

These centres serve pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children under six, providing nutrition supplementation, health monitoring, and pre-primary education. The scheme depends entirely on worker dedication despite inadequate compensation and irregular payment. The non-payment of salaries on schedule creates situations where workers cannot focus entirely on beneficiary care, instead remaining preoccupied with household financial crises.

The retirement benefit system compounds the payment irregularities. Workers are entitled to a one-time lump sum benefit upon retirement of Rs 1 lakh after extended service periods, or Rs 75,000 for helpers.

These benefits are frequently not disbursed despite workers retiring and fulfilling all conditions for receipt. Cases documented in 2024 showed retired workers queuing at ICDS offices for years, attempting to obtain these modest retirement payments.

The non-payment of retirement benefits forces retired workers to take loans at high interest rates or depend on family members for survival post-retirement, despite having contributed decades of service.

The core difficulty facing Anganwadi workers in Chandrapur and across Vidarbha remains unresolved: the administrative framework has not established reliable mechanisms to ensure regular and complete payment of all compensation components.

Workers function with uncertainty about monthly income, frequently advancing personal funds for centre operations, and depending on delayed reimbursements that may take months to process.

The structural inadequacies in the payment system, combined with insufficient base compensation and lack of permanent employment status, create a situation of chronic financial instability for workers whose service supports crucial child development and nutrition programmes across rural areas.

The irregular receipt of honorarium payments represents a fundamental failure to recognise and appropriately compensate essential frontline workers.

Until the payment system functions reliably and compensation increases account for inflation and service quality, Anganwadi workers will continue to experience the hardship that comes from serving their communities while struggling to maintain their own households.