Nearly Two-Thirds of Mid-Day Meal Cooks in India Are Paid Less Than Rs 2,000 a Month

 

There are nearly 25 lakh cook-cum-helpers (CCHs) engaged in the scheme, which is now knows as PM Poshan.

Sunita Devi serving a mid-day meal to students in Masauhri.

New Delhi: Nearly two-thirds of the people engaged as cooks for the mid-day meal scheme are paid less than Rs 2,000 per month, according to an Indian Express report.

There are nearly 25 lakh cook-cum-helpers (CCHs) engaged in the scheme, which is now knows as PM Poshan. According to the Indian Express, the monthly pay for the cooks has been frozen at Rs 1,000 since 2009 in eight states and three Union Territories. Additionally, in five states – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Odisha – there have been minor hikes in the monthly payments but remain well below Rs 2,000. These five states account for nearly a third of the mid-day meal workforce.

One Union Territory and two states and  in the south – Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Kerala – pay the CCHs up to Rs 21,000, Rs 12,000 and Rs 9,000 respectively on a monthly basis.

A senior Union government official told the Indian Express that because the CCHs are classified as “honorary workers” who are rendering social services and not “workers”, the laws on minimum wages are not applied.

The official added that there had been two pitches to hike the wages to Rs 2,000 in the past three years, but the finance ministry shot them down, saying state governments should “top up the payment based on requirements and demands”.

Under the PM Poshan scheme, the wages of cooks and workers are split between the Union government and states in a 60:40 ratio.

The newspaper also reported that in March, a Rajya Sabha standing committee report had noted that the disparity in the honorarium paid to the cook-cum-helper by different states. It recommended the development of a uniform system for deciding the honorarium to be paid to the cooks and parity between different states. This was a reiteration of the recommendation made by another Rajya Sabha standing committee in 2020, according to IE.

 SOURCE ; THE WIRE

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