Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The treasury will have to fork out close to $100 million to fund the lavish lifestyle of each of the 650 Members of Parliament (MPs).
The lawmakers at the Transitional National Legislative Assembly are set to receive in excess of $56 million in car grants alone. The figure could go up by another $3 million if the ministry of finance and planning releases the money as directed by speaker Jamme Nunu Kumba.
Kumba, while delivering her speech during the opening of parliament yesterday, announced that she has placed the request before the ministry of finance and planning, to clear the balance of medical allowance and cars for the lawmakers.
She said TNL has streamlined the budget and has directed the ministry of finance to urgently allocate funds to government institutions to enable them to function and deliver services to the people.
“The request for the balance of the medical allowances as well as the betterment allowance and cars for all MPs are already before the ministry of finance,” said Nunu.
According to sources, each MP is entitled to will get $50,000 car grant.
There are 650 MPs, both in the Transitional National Legislative Assembly and the Council of States constituting the National Legislature. This means that the ministry of finance will have to allocate not less than $30 million for MPs’ car grants.
The emolument Act, 2022 passed by the August House, sometime back gave entitles MPs to medical allowance and car loans.
The car loan and the balance of the medical allowance owed to current MPs, as well as the medical allowance for the 450 legislatures, will cost the government in excess of $55.7 million.
The money for the car alone for the 650 MPs is not less than $42.3 while the balance of the medical allowance is $10 million.
This excludes the allocation and benefits packages for the speaker.
Additionally, according to the emolument Act, 2022, each MP is supposed to get an annual medical allowance equivalent to $30,000.
The MPs have received half of their annual medical allowance for last year and they were demanding the ministry of finance also pay the arrears for 2021. However, it is not clear if they will be paid the arrears of 2021 as well. If it does, the exchequer will cough out millions of dollars to make your local area representative comfortable.
Source: The City Review South Sudan
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