The parliamentarians have drafted a bill to increase their salaries and privileges in proportion to the rising inflation, which will be presented in the Senate today (Monday).
The Senate has included three draft bills in its agenda for the Monday’s private members day, seeking massive increase in salaries, perks and privileges of the Senate chairman, deputy chairman and NA speaker and deputy speaker, besides members of parliament despite repeated calls for austerity by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The bill demanded the salaries of Senate chairman, deputy chairman and NA speaker and deputy speaker be equivalent to judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC). The draft bill seeks an increase in the salaries of Senate chairman and National Assembly speaker from Rs 225,000 to Rs 879,000 to match the salaries of Supreme Court judges, and a rise in the remuneration of the Senate deputy chairman and National Assembly deputy speaker to match those of high court judges.
The bill also seeks to increase the salaries of members of parliament from Rs 150,000 to Rs 300,000. It also calls for the travel allowance of parliamentarians to be increased to cover the cost of business class air tickets and AC class train tickets. The bill further seeks 25 business class tickets to be allocated for each lawmaker. On the other hand, the government and Pakistan People’s Party opposed the bill. Senate Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwalla distanced himself from the proposed bill and said that he did not voice his support for an increase in salaries. He urged the government to provide relief to the poor people instead of raising their salaries. The PPP decided to strongly oppose the proposed bill. Sherry Rehman tweeted, “We will not support the bill on the salary increase for parliamentarians. This is a time of great economic crisis for the people of Pakistan and not the time to for us to start matching our salaries with the region or others. Public money needs to be spent on public relief right now.”
Senator Sajjad Hussain Turi, the PTI’s chief whip in the Senate, said that the bill would be scrapped if a consensus could not be reached. Turi was supposed to table the bill in the Senate on Monday.
