This official doesn't want hiked dearness allowance!

How often do you find a government employee who doesn39t want a hike in dearness allowance DA But Kolkata resident Hiralal Burman is an exception he refuses to accept his increased allowance to protest the poor DA hike for workers under the 100day rural jobs scheme Burman an assistant accounts officer in the Kolkata branch of the Indian Audits and Accounts department had shot off a letter to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India last year after the central government decided to raise the dearness allowance by seven percent in July 2011 quotI don39t want the seven percent increased DA It is a small token of protest from an Indian against the indifference the union government has shown towards workers in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act MGNREGAquot Burman told IANS While after the hike he gets around Rs1600 in DA he says workers in West Bengal used to get Rs130 as variable dearness alloance VDA under MGNREGA and since April have been getting Rs136 a meagre increase of Rs6 He feels though central and state government employees get compensated whenever there is a rise in price of essentials labourers under the scheme suffer as the VDA hike under MGNREGA is nominal Burman a government employee for 17 years has been doing voluntary service in several districts with the aim of improving the living standards of the underprivileged quotFirst of all poor people who look up to the 100 days employment scheme are not getting full 100 days of work On top of that the VDA hike for them is very meagre The hiked VDA in no way can be compared with the everincreasing inflationquot said Burman who is in his mid40s Ironically despite his protests he continues to receive the hiked amount of DA as there is no law to deduct the increased sum from the salary quotEven after so many months I continue to get an increased DA I have informed senior officials but they have told me there is no specific law to deduct the increased sum I hope after this news comes up something concrete will happenquot he said Earlier too he has declined to take honorariums for working extra hours quotTwice I have declined honorariumsspecial pay offered for working extra hours I felt that the salary I receive is enough for me so I refused those honorariumsquot he said Burman has made it a habit of visiting the rural parts of the state every Sunday and help illiterate villagers in getting their dues under government schemes and policies quotThere are lots of propeople policies for the poor but the problem is most villagers are illiterate and don39t know how to take advantage of these schemes So I help them by writing applications and other official choresquot Burman a commerce graduate has been working among the poor and the marginalised for the last 1012 yearsu00a0