New Delhi: The Modi government's decision to hike wages of MNREGA workers in Jharkhand by Rs 5 has not gone down well with the intended beneficiaries.
To register their protest over the meager hike, hundreds of workers from Latehar have sent envelopes containing five-rupee notes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The workers also enclosed a message for Modi in the envelopes. The workers wrote that they were “feeling very lucky” because the wage hike in some other states was even less that what they have been offered.
A report in The Telegraph quotes from the letter. "It seems that MGNREGS workers in Odisha are now considered well-off because their wages have not been increased at all. Actually, we are very concerned. The government must be really short of money as it is unable to raise MGNREGS wages, that too when one-third of the rural population are affected by drought."
"We feel that you need the extra five rupees more than we do since your government has so many expenses. To implement the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, you will have to spend an additional Rs 1 lakh crore at least on salaries and pensions of government employees. Defence expenditure is about Rs 2.5 lakh crore. You must also be spending a lot of money in terms of tax concessions given to big companies, apart from giving them cheap land and other resources."
"Considering all this, we MGNREGS workers have made a collective decision to give up our extra wages for a day and return the extra five rupees to you. We hope that this will help you keep your corporate friends and government employees happy."
