Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The Minister of Finance and Planning, Agak Achuil, presented the emolument statute for the fiscal year 2021/2022 to the Transitional National Legislative Assembly for review yesterday.
The chairperson of the information committee, John Agany, told the City Review in an exclusive interview in his office yesterday that the Emolument Act has been referred to an ad hoc committee for deliberation and scrutiny before being tabled back to the National Legislature, where the two houses will come together to discuss and pass it.
“After some time, I believe it will come back to the assembly, maybe in the next sitting. It should be on the agenda that it will be tabled to the National Legislature,” Agany told the City Review.
According to Agany, the emolument statute has not been reviewed since its enactment when South Sudan was declared independent in 2011. The emolument is paid to constitutional officeholders who are hired by the government to administer their positions.
The act, he stated, is separated into two halves. He noted that the first section responds to the subject of how to calculate the salaries of constitution post holders, as well as providing various benefits to public officials, albeit these benefits are not always met due to poor economic conditions for the case of South Sudan.
The legislator asserted that some raft laws were made prior to the emolument act but were not widely recognised. “After we became a nation, we had an emolument act up to today, and the money allocated to constitutional post holders was better because the devaluation of pounds was not liquidity. One dollar was equivalent to two pounds by then, so it was actually better,” he explained.
Agany stated that the payment to constitutional post holders has not changed despite the depreciation of the South Sudanese Pounds. For example, he stated that an MP is paid SSP9,400, which is the equivalent of $20 USD.
He further said that the emolument act is linked to the privileges since it is a financial statute that only applies to constitutional position holders who are appointed for a specific period of time and then leave.
“It is like an assignment which [is] given to you, and you should not be longer than what time says, unlike the civil servants [who] can serve for many years but are constitutional holders. They serve only that very period, and then when the time expires, it expires, ” the lawmaker remarked.
An emolument is payment for work, services, or holding office based on time and length of activity, and is often used in a legal context to signify either work or labour, or benefit, gain, or profit while in public office.
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