Payday pangs: Here's what is worrying Mumbai

One of the 80 stalls at the Juhu Beach which plan to move to cashless payments. File pic

How hospitality sector is tackling salary issue

- Gaurav Sarkar

On the first salary day since Prime Minister Modi's demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, employers in the hospitality sector have chosen two different routes to tackle their predicament.

While some have changed their policy of directly crediting the salary to their employees' accounts to now paying them by cash so that the employees do not have to waste time in bank queues, others, who have always been paying cash to its employees, are now planning on going ‘cashless'.

Mixed signals
Yash Chandiramani (25), owner of Go Panda - a pan-Asian cuisine restaurant in Andheri (W) that employs around 10 people, says, "In one of our weekly meetings, our team expressed their concern that cheques/self cheques usually given to them would be a task this time as they would have to stand in long queues. So we took a call and have decided to pay them in cash. Our team works a good 8-9 hours a day, so I can't expect them to stand in a 4-hour long queue, report to work on time and run the place smoothly. Unfortunately, since they don't have the privilege of a credit card or handle any transactions through digital money, it's the least we could do for them."

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Meanwhile, Ganesh Thevar, a member of the Juhu Beach Food Court Society (the collective name for the 80 stalls/eateries located on Juhu Beach that employs nearly 300 employees), stated that though their employees would be paid in cash for the time being, in the future, all payments would be made by cheque. "This trend of moving towards a cashless and more plastic-oriented economy is a good thing. It will prevent workers - who used to be paid their salaries in cash till now - from stealing that extra 100-200 rupees that they used to every month, as we will directly credit their salaries."

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According to him, paying workers in cash came in handy sometimes, as workers could take smaller advances in case of household emergencies. These advances were then adjusted against their next month's salary.