11-28-2008, 06:05 PM
he has being treated for his kidney problem abroad too
Higher Salaries But let them spend their own money on medical treatment and personal security
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Singh, the eminence grise of the present Government, has just returned from a long sojourn in London where he went for treatment of a kidney ailment. This is something our prime ministers, ministers and ex-ministers do routinely at taxpayers' expense. But what makes the expenditure in the present case even more unacceptable is the fact that we have ended up spending a lot of money under what appear to be medically unnecessary heads. Singh, you see, did not go alone. He and his wife were accompanied by a contingent of eight Special Protection Group (SPG) men. These officers went for little more than a summer holiday since they were obliged to deposit their weapons at Heathrow airport before entering the United Kingdom.
London has highly efficient security guards on hire but the SPG appears to have felt that its own men were more able to deal with potential assassins, even while unarmed. It also wanted to distribute the summer holiday evenly among its staff. So contingents of eight men went back and forth every two weeks and since Singh was staying in a suite at the St James' Court Hotel, naturally had to be put up there. This is one of the Taj group's international five-star hotels in which an ordinary room costs more than Rs 10,000 a day.
Needless to say, taxpayers' money paid for everything from hotel accommodation to healthcare to the limousine that was available to the ex-prime minister 24 hours a day. Calculate this kind of expenditure over three months and we are talking about crores of rupees.
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Higher Salaries But let them spend their own money on medical treatment and personal security
---
Singh, the eminence grise of the present Government, has just returned from a long sojourn in London where he went for treatment of a kidney ailment. This is something our prime ministers, ministers and ex-ministers do routinely at taxpayers' expense. But what makes the expenditure in the present case even more unacceptable is the fact that we have ended up spending a lot of money under what appear to be medically unnecessary heads. Singh, you see, did not go alone. He and his wife were accompanied by a contingent of eight Special Protection Group (SPG) men. These officers went for little more than a summer holiday since they were obliged to deposit their weapons at Heathrow airport before entering the United Kingdom.
London has highly efficient security guards on hire but the SPG appears to have felt that its own men were more able to deal with potential assassins, even while unarmed. It also wanted to distribute the summer holiday evenly among its staff. So contingents of eight men went back and forth every two weeks and since Singh was staying in a suite at the St James' Court Hotel, naturally had to be put up there. This is one of the Taj group's international five-star hotels in which an ordinary room costs more than Rs 10,000 a day.
Needless to say, taxpayers' money paid for everything from hotel accommodation to healthcare to the limousine that was available to the ex-prime minister 24 hours a day. Calculate this kind of expenditure over three months and we are talking about crores of rupees.
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