With so little cash, you can’t even have
a decent dinner, forget running regular diplomatic business, the Russian
ambassador to India told New Delhi in a strongly worded letter as the country,
a major global player and a key defence supplier for India, officially
critiqued demonetisation-induced cash shortage for its diplomatic staff. Diplomatic missions of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia and
Sudan have also sent protest letters on cash withdrawal restrictions.
Russian ambassador Alexander Kadakin, an old India hand,
wrote to the ministry of external affairs (MEA) on December 2: “Please just
imagine if we in Moscow mirror this order of SBI (State Bank of India) when
50,000 Roubles will not be enough to pay for a decent dinner in a restaurant,
not to mention functioning of such a big embassy as ours in New Delhi or India’s
in Moscow.”
With
so little cash, you can’t even have a decent dinner, forget running regular
diplomatic business, the Russian ambassador to India told New Delhi in a
strongly worded letter as the country, a major global player and a key defence supplier
for India, officially critiqued demonetisation-induced cash shortage for its
diplomatic staff.
Diplomatic
missions of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia and Sudan have also sent protest
letters on cash withdrawal restrictions.
Russian
ambassador Alexander Kadakin, an old India hand, wrote to the ministry of
external affairs (MEA) on December 2: “Please just imagine if we in Moscow
mirror this order of SBI (State Bank of India) when 50,000 Roubles will not be
enough to pay for a decent dinner in a restaurant, not to mention functioning
of such a big embassy as ours in New Delhi or India’s in Moscow.”
“SBI
informed the Embassy that the cash withdrawal limit available to the Embassy is
now Rs 50,000 per week under the government of India directives with no
exceptions unless otherwise advised by the RBI,” he wrote.
“Such
an amount is totally inadequate as regards the embassy’s salary and operational
expenditure requirements.”
Officials
in the Russian embassy, who spoke off record, told that its New Delhi mission
has a staff strength of 200 (excluding family members) and with the new
withdrawal limit the cash at hand for one person comes to Rs 250 a week.
Kadakin
in his letter urged MEA to intervene so that the withdrawal restrictions for
diplomatic staff is lifted.
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