Legislators’ salaries

Senators have righteously rejected a proposal to increase their own salaries, fending off invariably harsh backlash

Senators have righteously rejected a proposal to increase their own salaries, fending off the invariably harsh backlash. In these harsh economic times, doubling, and in some cases, quadrupling, of salaries for parliamentarians would have been an arrogant slap on the face of every Pakistani. Some senators, however, still offered tone-deaf defences for why such increases were necessary. One of them was Senator Usman Khan Kakar of PkMAP, who claimed that parliamentarians make “less than a grade-17 officer”. That is a lie. The minimum salary of an MNA is Rs150,000, not including allowances, which can easily exceed Rs200,000 per month. The maximum salary of a grade 17 officer is under Rs77,000. In most cases, the total allowances for bureaucrats do not exceed their salaries. In fact, only the highest-paid BS-22 bureaucrats have higher salaries than backbench MNAs, and even then, they have fewer allowances.

We can only speculate why a man demanding a raise would make such an easily rubbished false claim, but it certainly does not help his case for a raise. The fact is that Pakistan’s Senate is modelled on the House of Lords. Members are not voted in by the general public. They are supposed to be picked based on their competence. Most competent people don’t demand raises from a company facing bankruptcy. An interesting side note to the proceedings came from Senator Sajjad Hussain Turi — PTI’s chief whip in the Senate. Even though his party voted against the bills, he had claimed just a day earlier that almost 85 per cent of senators supported them, and that legislators deserved raises, even in these trying times.

It is not uncommon though for politicians to grow consciences overnight. Given the backlash the PTI has already received after its provincial lawmakers tried to raise their own salaries, it would be unlikely that party leaders would risk letting another embarrassing situation arise. PTI Senator Faisal Javed referred to this, saying the “timing of the bill was not right”, while adding that the salaries would be increased once the economic situation improved. National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser also expressed similar views. 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2020.

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