Factories, private schools take advance salary route to beat note ban

KOLKATA/ASANSOL: In the time of crisis, demonetisation has brought a windfall to people working across a range of sectors in Bengal, who are suddenly inundated with a lot of cash from their employers.

In an effort to dispose of discontinued currency, labour intensive small and mid-sized heavy metal units, a few private schools and some small medi-care units are paying their staff months of salary in advance, in wads of now-scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

Prevailing in patches in Kolkata and its suburbs over the past week, the issue has acquired a bigger dimension with several sponge iron, steel and metal forging units in the Asansol-Durgapur industrial corridor paying their workers advance wages for two to seven months in banned currency.


This belt alone is home to nearly 25 such big and medium-scale units that employ an estimated 19,052 people.

Informed of the illegality, the administration expressed helplessness. Burdwan district magistrate Soumitra Mohan said, “Unless there are specific complaints, we can do little.”

A steel company director, who paid his workers three months’ wages on Saturday, said: “Usually, we pay this via electronic fund transfer. All our workers have salary accounts. This bulk salary transfer isn’t possible now. So, we are paying them in cash. All they have to do is deposit this in their salary accounts. No one is evading the law.”

In Kolkata, a private English medium school on the city’s southwestern fringes paid its staff 10 months of salary last week, all in the banned notes. Antara Das, a teacher, admitted she was at a loss after receiving Rs 1.2 lakhs as advance salary. Das, who is newly married, has been on a buying spree since then.