Delhi RWAs bear brunt of cash crunch, staff wages remain unpaid

RWAs claimed that they were feeling the pinch with salaries of their employed staff, including security guards, gardeners and others, going unpaid.

The problems being faced due to demonetisation have now moved beyond individual households with Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) across the capital claiming they too are finding it difficult to pay salaries to their support staff.

RWAs claimed that they were feeling the pinch with salaries of their employed staff, including security guards, gardeners and others, going unpaid.

A month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that old Rs500 and Rs1,000 rupee notes would cease to be legal tenders, RWAs claimed that they were feeling the pinch with salaries of their employed staff, including security guards, gardeners and others, going unpaid.

“Most of the RWAs in the Capital employ their own security guards and gardeners, office clerk and other maintenance staff. The salary of most of these staff is paid in cash around the 7th & 8th of every month. This is because most such people do not have bank accounts,” said VN Bali, secretary of RWA Federation in East Delhi.

Citing an example of most housing societies in east Delhi he added: “Each gated society employs about 6-10 security guards on an average. They are paid an average salary of Rs 8,000- Rs 12,000 per month. The banks are currently not dispensing a lot of cash to pay these guards in cash.”

According to Ritesh Dewan, president, CA Block RWA, Shalimar Bagh, asking the staff to open bank accounts had not yielded any results.

“We have asked our employees, mostly casual staff, to open bank accounts for salary credits as we wanted to make all payments through cheques. But long queues outside banks are deterring them from opening accounts. We have released no payment so far as the amount specified or released by the banks is too small to pay anyone off,” he said.