The payment of a fixed honorarium to Haritha Karma Sena members is not under consideration at present, Minister for Local Self-government M.B. Rajesh has said. He was replying to a submission by G. Stephen, MLA, in the Assembly on Thursday demanding a fixed pay for Haritha Karma Sena members who worked to keep local bodies clean.
The Minister said that steps were under way to ensure that each Haritha Karma Sena unit functioned as a successful enterprise. These units were registered with the Kudumbashree community development societies. As the Haritha Karma Sena units functioned at the local body level, their consortium had been formed and their daily operations, including turnover and pay, were handled at that level.
User fee sources
The government issued orders fixing the ‘user fee’ from time to time. This fee, collected by the units from houses and establishments, was used to meet expenses, including unit members’ pay. This could be the money collected from houses and commercial establishments as payment for services, that from other establishments, that collected during special programmes, payment for cleaning public spaces, parks, and roads, that for taking up community composting, and that received for implementing green protocol.
Additional income
The Haritha Karma Sena members could also earn additional money through cloth bag and grow bag manufacture. After keeping aside 10% of the funds earmarked for the account of the Haritha Karma Sena consortium as corpus fund, the remaining was divided among the members. The money available to a unit member depended on the income from the particular area and the number of houses and establishments from where non-biodegradable waste was collected. This would vary with each local body. Recently, there were reports of the Haritha Karma Sena at Keezhattur in Malappuram getting ₹62,216 as income.
The Minister said it was expected that the amount received as user fee would go up significantly as part of the Waste-free Kerala campaign. When the first phase of the campaign ended, it was seen that the unit members’ user fee collection increased in the range of ₹10,000 to ₹25,000 in urban areas and panchayats with urban character. In panchayats, this ranged from ₹5,000 to ₹9,000. This was expected to increase in the near future.
In areas where the income from user fee was very little, local bodies were giving the consortiums viability gap funding as per government orders.
