Parliament's Public Accounts Committee decided to increase salaries for senior state officials in order to ensure pay harmonization after the President's Office requested a pay rise for the Privatization and Corporatization Board (PCB), the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party's (MDP) parliamentary group has said.
On Tuesday, Parliament's Public Accounts Committee unanimously approved raising the salary of MPs to MVR 80,000. As MPs would continue to receive a committee allowance of MVR 20,000, the total pay would rise to MVR 100,000.
The MDP's parliamentary group (PG), the majority in Parliament, faced heavy criticism from the public over the pay hikes.
Following a request signed by President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu on November 21, 2023 to raise the salary for the PCB, the changes were made to harmonize pay across all institutions in need of pay raises, the MDP's PG said on Wednesday.
"Parliament was requested on behalf of President Muizzu's government while this process was ongoing to change the salary of the PCB President to MVR 55,000 with MVR 45,000 for the Vice President and MVR 20,000 for board members. So the government has requested as well. The government does not need to request for the other places," Dhaandhoo MP Yaugoob Abdulla said.
As discrepancies in pay among state institutions when salaries are raised for a particular institution would be a problem, MVR 500 million was allocated in the budget for pay harmonization, the MDP said. Changes to the budget would therefore not be necessary with the pay hikes, the party said.
"With this change, an additional MVR 90 million out of the MVR 500 million would be spent a year. There's still MVR 410 million left. This MVR 410 million was an amount determined for those the government wants to raise salaries, including police, soldiers, civil servants," Yaugoob said.
In addition to MPs, the committee also approved pay rises for the President, Vice President, ministers, judges, magistrates, directors of government ministries, board members, city council members and island council members.
Despite the committee's approval, a final decision on the pay hikes will be made at the Parliament floor after debating the committee report.
The current salary of MPs is MVR 62,500 or a total of MVR 82,500 with the committee allowance. Public dissatisfaction persisted over that salary as well.
