Accredited Social Health Activists, known as ASHAs, have been the backbone of our health system in ensuring maternal and child health in both rural and urban areas.
They are paid task-based incentives where they have to raise their claims on a monthly basis. But this led to several delays of payment in the past due to lengthy approval processes. To curb this problem, the Meghalaya State government introduced the ASHA Payment Application, an end to end direct to beneficiary payment app developed specifically to ease the payment process of ASHA incentives. After releasing about Rs 80 crore of pending payments, the Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma and the Health Department had set a mandate to ensure timely payments without any delay to every ASHA worker.
Keeping her phone aside, Happy Mawkdoh, ASHA under Mawroh PHC, said, “I have just raised my claim for this month on my phone”. She explains that through the app, “payments are made within five days from the time the claim is raised”. Prior to this initiative, ASHA workers had to wait for months to avail their incentives. “Delay in payments in the past led to several unrest amongst us,” she said.
The ASHA Payment App was rolled out across the state in March 2022 and, till date, 7,067 ASHAs have registered, of which 6,915 have been approved. A total of Rs 9.13 crore have been disbursed so far.
According to the Mission Director, National Health Mission, Ramkumar S, “The old system was tedious, time consuming and had too many processes which resulted in delay of payments”.
Earlier the payment process for ASHAs would take 120-150 days but with the use of the App this has been reduced to 5-7 working days. Along with timely disbursement of payment, the application also ensures transparency as payment is made directly to the individual’s bank account. It also enables the district and state officials to monitor the performance of ASHAs and to generate payment status reports on a real time basis. All the details are made available on www.meghealth.in for anyone to check on the details.
A 47-year-old ASHA worker from Mowtyrshiah village, West Jaintia Hills, Judis Shadap, recalls how long it would take for her to get her payments/incentives after she had submitted her claim to the local ASHA facilitators. Now, however, she relies on her daughter to raise her claims in the Asha Payment App.
“I am still not familiar with raising payment through my phone, I still record all my tasks in a register and my daughter helps me raise claims in the app,” she said.
Despite facing low internet connectivity, Piulish R Marak, District Community Process Coordinator under NHM, Tura, stated that ASHAs have been raising their incentive claims through the app, realising that it offers several advantages for the end users. It has also made them more aware of their payment eligibility and reasons for their payment ineligibility.
Currently, the payment to ASHA workers is done from the PHC level by consolidating the incentives entitlements under different health programmes under the National Health Mission and for all the ASHAs under a particular PHC. The total amount is paid on a monthly basis, i.e. by the 30th of every month.
