WHY DO THE MPS RAISE THEIR OWN SALARIES
Gevorg Harutyunyan
Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on June 04, 2008
Armenia
Seven MPs representing RPA, "Bargavach Hayastan", "Orinats Yerkir"
and ARFD parliamentary factions submitted a bill, which envisages
amendments and supplementations in the law on the "The Salaries of
RA legislative, executive and judicial bodies."
Should the parliament approve this bill the salaries of the Chairman
of the Constitutional Court, Ministers, Major of Yerevan and all the
MPs will twice increase.
Correspondent of "Hayots Ashkharh" daily had conversation with the
co-authors of the bill, yesterday.
Rafik Petrosyan
RPA
"The law in which we propose to make amendments and supplementations
has been adopted still in 2002, but the salaries of the high ranking
state officials haven’t changed during the previous six years. Whereas
the salaries of the civil employees have been reviewed several
times. Therefore members of four fractions of the parliament came
out with an initiative to review the salaries of the high-ranking
officials.
The country’s Prime Minister and Speaker of NA who get 340 thousand
drams (300 thousand after retention) can’t cover the expenses linked
with the activity of an MP. We have proposed to double the salaries
of the high-ranking officials.
We have taken into considerations our people’s social state and
continuous inflation. We have also taken into account the fact that
the employees of the private sector, in fact, get more salaries than
the MPs.
The increase of the salaries of the high-ranking official is a matter
of prestige for the state as well. We must pay proper salaries to our
MPs, Ministers and other high-ranking officials. This way we can stop
the overflow of our best specialists to the private sectors were they
get higher salaries.
ARA NRANYAN
ARF
"Still in 2002 the authorities set about the formation of the institute
of civil employees and created a system of joint payment. At that time
the basic salary was 20 thousand drams. During the previous years the
salaries of the civil employees have been doubled, but the salaries of
the public employees, except the judicial system has remained the same.
This is nonsense. The Prosecutor or the Judge get more salary than the
country’s President or the Prime Minister. What we need is a complex
package of laws and to represent the whole system of public service
in a single legislative domain.
We have proposed to double the salaries of the country’s President,
Speaker of NA, the Prime Minister, the Ministers and the MPs, which
is firstly aimed at making the state system competitive. So in this
term, I don’t see any grounds for complaints, because this initiative
raises the level of the salaries in the whole country, increase of
budgetary salaries as well as the salaries of the private sector."
VARDAN BOSTANGYAN
"Bargavach Hayastan Party"
"Some MPs implement both legal and political activities. It is not
a secret that the MPs don’t get proper salaries for their overloaded
work.
Maybe all the 131 MPs would like to be the co-authors of the bill
but only seven have signed it. In my view we do our work properly and
we have the right to submit such draft law. If some MPs have certain
income from different sources and they don’t need this salary, this
doesn’t mean that we also don’t need it. We must observe all the
social and political circumstances.
After the formation of the Council of the Central Bank we adopted
a principle, according to which the level of the salaries in the
Central Bank cannot be less than the salaries in the whole banking
system. Otherwise all the best specialists will shift to the private
banks.
The same thing our state must do, so that the best specialists won’t
have to respond to the proposals from the private sector. This logic
of competition must work in all the spheres. Otherwise there will be
no stimulus to work better."