Amritsar: ASHA worker ‘attacked’ for reporting arrival of migrants in village

Prakash Kaur informed the Health Department on Saturday about the arrival of migrant labourers. After this, Health Department officials visited the house of Harbhajan Singh and asked him to get their medical check-up done.

It provoked Harbhajan Singh and he, along with his relatives and friends, allegedly attacked the ASHA worker at her house on Sunday.

SHO Batala Sadar police station Sukhraj Singh confirmed that Prakash Kaur and her family were attacked and main reason behind the alleged attack was reporting arrival of migrant labourers by her.

“Harbhajan Singh has also made cross complaint of attack on him. The main reasons behind confrontation is reporting of migrant labourers by Parkash Kaur. We are investigating the matter,” said SHO.

But this is not an isolated incident where ASHA workers have faced offensive behaviour of suspects reported by them.

Joginder Kaur of village Peer Di Husain of Gurdaspur alleged that she was also abused by a villager after she reported about arrivals from outside Punjab.

“I was abused just because I did my job to protect the village. I had given a complaint to the Health Department authorities. So far nobody has taken any notice of it. I was abused when I went to the house of suspect to ask them to remain in quarantine for 14 days as per guidelines of government,” said Joginder Kaur.

Another Asha worker from village Balgan in Gurdaspur Surjit Kaur reached a written compromise with a suspect, who had abused her for the same reason. “I had reported about a family that had come from Uttar Pradesh. Health Department officials directed the family to remain in isolation according to guidelines. Family had also completed its quarantine period. However, after around 20 days, a young member of family abused me after drinking liquor. I bought the incident to the notice of police. Later the accused sought written apology in presence of police and panchayat,” said Surjit Kaur.

Gurdaspur ASHA workers’ association president Balvinder Kaur said, “We have been facing discrimination at many levels. We have to go door to door for the survey and people would often not co-operate with us fearing spread of infection from us. Besides people also get offended when we try to save the whole village from spread of infection from some outsider by following government guidelines. It makes suspected person or family think that we got them into some serious trouble. Police and health officials do not respond to such incident seriously and try to ignore it. There have been at least three such incidents in the Gurdaspur and FIR is not registered in any case.”

ASHA workers also held a protest against such incidents at Batala Civil Hospital on Monday.