Community Health Officers protest for workload reduction and incentives

Community Health Officers (CHOs) staged a demonstration at Dharna Chowk in Vijayawada on Monday (March 23, 2026), demanding a reduction in their workload and the continuation of incentives.

The CHOs, working in 10,038 Ayushman Aarogya Mandirs (Village Health Clinics) in Andhra Pradesh, are entitled to receive ₹25,000 as salary and depending on the performance, anywhere between ₹7,500 and ₹15,000 is paid as incentives. Every VHC has a CHO, an ASHA and an ANM.

“While earlier, we used to receive the salary and the incentives for working from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., recently, the government introduced Face Recognition System (FRS) at 8 p.m., and made payment of incentives conditional on attendance till 8 p.m.,” said P. Prem Kumar, working at Kolaganivaripalem VHC in Bapatla district.

“Instead of increasing our salaries for putting in more hours, we are being stripped off whatever we used to receive earlier,” he said, adding that more than 4,000 CHOs did not receive incentives in December and January.

A woman CHO, on the condition of anonymity, pointed out that due to lack of a Standard Operating Procedure (SoP), there is no proper distribution of work between ASHAs, ANMs, and CHOs. “There is a lot of confusion regarding who should do what, and eventually, the work falls on the shoulders of the CHOs,” she pointed out.

The Community Health Officers also have to make digital entries of patients. The target is to make 20 entries per day. “It takes us 30 minutes to make one electronic health record. On top of that, we also have field work and must attend to outpatients,” Mr. Prem Kumar said.

In May 2025, the CHOs staged a massive protest for nearly a month demanding removal of FRS system, payment of arrears and extension of other benefits. The strike was called off after the government promised to resolve their issues. But the promise remains unfulfilled till date, the CHOs said.