Raiganj, Aug. 6: More than 12,000 children were not immunised in the pulse polio programme held on Sunday in North Dinajpur district.

Faced with the problem, the district health administration has decided to increase the stipend for health workers, who conduct the programme, from next time. Sources said 6,400 health workers had been engaged from August 3 for the programme.

“Despite the infrastructure in place, about 86,000 children could not be administered the vaccine on Sunday. Although the health workers went from door to door for administering the vaccine to the 86,000 children for the next two days, 12,440 of them are yet to be immunised,” said the chief medical officer of health, Sudhangsu Shekhar Sahoo.

He added that the authorities had noticed that the stipend paid to the workers was too low. “As they receive a meagre Rs 75 for the three days, they may not be very keen to do a thorough door-to-door survey. So we have decided to pay them Rs 200 for the three days from next time.”