India questions credibility of UN panel for false claims on women health workers

India slammed a UN panel for falsely claiming that women community health workers do not receive social security benefits. BJP MP Poonamben Maadam said the panel’s report lacked credibility, while reiterating that ASHA workers are covered under pension, health, and insurance schemes.

United Nations: India has questioned the credibility of a UN panel which prepared a report on discrimination against women claiming falsely that women community health workers in India do not get social security benefits.

BJP MP Poonamben Maadam said on Friday, the approach of the working group that prepared the report “is misleading, to say the least, but more gravely, it questions the credibility and veracity of the information and recommendations” in it.

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She was speaking at the Interactive Dialogue on Advancement of Women held by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian, and cultural issues.

The committee considered the report of the UN’s Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls, which singled out India to claim that the nation’s women community health workers do not get social security benefits.

“The Accredited Social Health Activist or ASHA programme is a cornerstone of India’s community health system and is critical to taking basic health care facilities to every village in India”, she said.

ASHA workers receive performance-based pay in addition to social security benefits, she said.

“The Prime Minister’s pension scheme provides a monthly pension to ASHAs after the age of 60”, Maadam pointed out.

They also get annual health coverage of Rs 500,000 and life insurance coverage of Rs 200,000 under the Prime Minister’s insurance schemes, she said.

“I wish the working group had undertaken a proper study before singling out India in the report,” Maadam said.

Claudia Flores, a Yale University law professor who chairs the working group that produced the report, ignored Maadam’s criticism when she responded to observations by participants in the dialogue.

Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, who spoke towards the end of the session about surrogacy, also made an inaccurate claim about India.

While cautioning about problems of exploitation with surrogacy, she claimed that while in Britain “altruistic surrogacy is legal, still British nationals are amongst the most frequent foreign clients in India”.

But India banned commercial surrogacy and its use by foreigners under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act of 2021.

India now permits the use of altruistic, or non-commercial, surrogacy only by married Indian couples under stringent conditions.