Hike our salary from ₹10,000 to ₹50,000, say BMC corporators

Mumbai corporator and Samajwadi Party group leader Rais Shaikh has demanded that civic corporators be paid a salary of Rs50,000 a month, instead of the Rs10,000 they get currently.

The demand comes a few months after state legislators got a two-fold salary hike.

In a letter to civic chief Ajoy Mehta, Shaikh said the work corporators put in for citizens should be honoured, and that the Rs10,000 they get paid now was too low an amount.

He also asked that the travel allowance of Rs150 corporators get to attend general body meetings should be increased to Rs500.

There are 227 corporators and five nominated corporators in the general body of the BMC. The civic administration had, in 2012, proposed to hike their remuneration to Rs25,000, but this is yet to be implemented.

Shaikh said the civic administration had failed to follow up with the state on increasing the salary to Rs25,000 — even though the proposal was approved by the general body five years ago.

As the state is yet to approve the proposal of granting Rs25,000 in the form of compensation to corporators, Shaikh has now demanded the civic administration follows up with Rs50,000 as the amount.

“We work a lot in our wards and also spend on stationary or postage purposes. Such expenditure cost more than Rs10,000 a month. But the civic body has not managed to pay us the Rs25,000 that was approved in 2012. Now, the civic body should raise it to Rs50,000 at least,” Shaikh said.

The state government had recently increased the monthly salary of MLAs from Rs75,000 to more than Rs1.5 lakh.