Uniformed salaries for public servants our ‘red line’ says Rehmani

KABUL (SW) – Speaker of the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) on Wednesday asserted the draft annual budget would not be approved until the salaries of all public servants are uniformed.

In his remarks over the matter during Wednesday’s session, Mir Rehman Rehmani said plan to standardize the salaries of government employees is ‘red line’ for the house, and it shall be implemented via the code 91, 21 to 25 of the budget.

The house had previously approved a plan to equalize the salaries of government employees and called for it to be included in the budget document for the next fiscal year. They claimed employees in the same rank in some ministries and departments receive higher salaries than in other departments. Although the standardization of salary plan was approved by the cabinet about two years ago, but it has not been implemented yet.

The speaker said that the draft budget, which was previously rejected for 17 obvious reasons, has been resubmitted to the house by the Ministry of Finance. According to Rahmani, the first draft budget was rejected for the principle of fairness and equalization of salaries of government employees. He added the move was not based on personal confrontation, hostage-taking or for the sake of relocation of personal projects. He asked the Finance and Budget Committee to carefully review the second draft budget with a view to standardizing the salaries of government employees and not to allow budget for units created illegally by the government without the approval of the parliament.

Rehmani emphasized that the leadership of the government must consider the principle of separation of powers and respect the limits and competence of the legislature. According to him, the rejection of the budget, the non-approval of the national agenda and the vote of no confidence for some of the ministers are within the competence of the house, which is granted by the constitution.

He added the exercise of this legal authority should not be viewed as confrontation.

The rejection of the budget has provoked reaction of the President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani who has emphasized at least twice that the authority of the house is only to reject or approve the budget instead of dictating formation of the budget.

ENDS

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