If labourers’ pay based on calories, IAS officers’ should be too, says Kejriwal

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said the committee which studied the wage hike decided that labourers needed 2,700 calories a day.

Taking a dig at bureaucrats, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said IAS officers too should be paid on the basis of the calories they require if this rule was applicable to labourers.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal speaks during an event on Labour Day in New Delhi, on Tuesday. Kejriwal said that a committee of officers as well as representatives of labourers and contractors was formed to study the matter of low wages but it didn’t get Lt Governor Anil Baijal’s approval. (PTI)

Stressing that a labourer’s minimum monthly wage in Delhi which is ₹13,500 today was ₹9,500 earlier, he said the committee which studied the wage hike decided that labourers needed 2,700 calories a day.

“I told them that a worker won’t be paid based on calories. He is a human, not an animal... He has to educate his children, buy clothes... You can pay IAS officers based on their caloric needs, not labourers,” he told a meeting of the Delhi Workers Conference here on the occasion of May Day.

Relations between the AAP government and the bureaucracy have been tense since the alleged beating up of Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash by some Aam Aadmi Party MLAs.

Kejriwal said that a committee of officers as well as representatives of labourers and contractors was formed to study the matter of low wages but it didn’t get Lt Governor Anil Baijal’s approval.

“He (Baijal) complained that his permit was not asked for before forming it. We said we are asking now,” the Chief Minister said, adding that after the Lt Governor’s rejection, the same committee was formed with the same members as earlier.

“They held meetings and it took six more months to increase the (labourers’) wages.”

Attacking the Lt Governor, Kejriwal said that he has read about several revolutions, but never about such “Hitlershahi” (dictatorship).

He alleged that rejecting the proposal to set up the committee to study labourers’ wages exposed Baijal’s pride. “He was doing this because he was drunk on power. It made me angry but I was helpless.”