WASHINGTON: For all the complaints about India and its diplomats underpaying domestic help on their postings abroad, a 2009 state department evaluation of practices in US embassies and missions abroad revealed that some local employees they hired earn less than $1 a day. In fact, some of them were so poorly paid they had to cut back to one meal a day or send their children to peddle on the streets, the report said.

The report from the state department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which has been dusted off for scrutiny by some Indian officials amid a flaming row between Washington and New Delhi over the l’affaire Devyani, looked at how the US pays more than 51,000 local, non-American employees in about 170 missions abroad. In addition to the hardship caused to the workers because of inadequate pay, the report found that the US pays in what in some cases amounts to universal below-poverty level wages.

While the report did not provide the numbers of low-paid employees nor name missions where such situations occur, it blamed an inadequately staffed employment office in Washington for the inability to make appropriate changes to pay levels.

‘Mission workers forced to cut back to 1 meal a day’

"Twenty-seven missions presented compelling arguments that their lower-grade employees fall short of minimal living standards," the report said. "These arguments included accounts of LE (locally employed) staff removing children from school, cutting back to one meal a day, sending children to sell water or little cakes or toiletries on the streets ... employees depending on salary advances and defaulting on loans in order to cover basic expenses ... (pay) grades 1 to 3 earning less than $1 per day."

Asked about the report and any action taken on its recommendations in the context of the Khobragade row, a state department spokesperson said, "Generally, compensation plans for locally employed staff at US missions abroad are based upon prevailing wage rates and compensation practices for corresponding types of positions in the employment locality."

Exchanges in Washington also suggested the two nations are at an impasse over New Delhi’s intended scrutiny of wages at US embassy and consulates in India following the Khobragade spat. Administration sources maintain that salaries of employees at missions abroad are not made public for a variety of reasons, "including their own privacy and security". But they insist — while asserting the need for confidentiality — that "despite some current negative reporting … our embassies and consulates are actually very generous in our compensations to local employees".

The OIG report also did not go into precise wages but said salary differences between American staff and local hires are a source of tension in missions. In fact, a 2005 OIG evaluation of the US embassy and missions in India had noted that delay in implementing salary increase to local staff in New Delhi had led to "increased troubles in the embassy’s front office".

"The differences in how salary increases are initiated and implemented for American and LE staff are a point of tension, and make it difficult for the management to explain the compensation process to the LE staff," the 2009 report said.

A state department official had said at that time that the administration established a "working group" to have a better assess to pay situations for locally employed staff. In addition to providing adequate compensation, the goal was to keep good employees and recruit qualified new workers, the official said. But Wednesday’s queries with the state department did not elicit any clarification on whether the recommendations of the 2009 OIG report were acted on.