Guest Post by Awab Alvi (Teeth Maestro)
I have recently come across a few interesting facts regarding the pay scale and fringe benefits enjoyed by each member of our National Assembly (here).
It is more than you might expect. Rs. 32,000,000 per MNA per year; or Rs.8,54,40,000,000 5,47,20,000,000 for all 534 342 MNAs for the 5 year tenure. Democracy, even cosmetic democracy, does not come cheap!
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Pakistani MNA’s Salary and Government Perks
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Monthly Salary
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Rs. 120,000 to 200,000
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Expense for Constitution per month
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Rs.100,000
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Office expenditure per month
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Rs.140,000
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Traveling concession (Rs. 8 per km)
(For a visit to ISLAMABAD & return: 6000 km) |
Rs.48,000
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Daily BETA during Assembly meets
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Rs.500
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Charge for 1 class (A/C) in train
(All over PAKISTAN) |
Free
Unlimited |
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Charge for Business Class in flights
(With wife or P.A.) |
Free for 40
trips / year |
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Rent for Govt hostel any where
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Free
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Electricity costs at home
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Free up to 50,000 units
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Local phone call charge
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Free up to 1,70,000 calls.
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TOTAL expense for a MNA per year
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Rs.32,000,000
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TOTAL expense for 5 years
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Rs.1,60,000,000
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For
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Rs. 5,47,20,000,000 |
Keep in mind that these numbers are only the official estimates. You can imagine for yourself the unofficial sums easily acquired by a man in such a position.
Why are we wasting so much of money on a ghost assembly whose job is to do … NOTHING. They have no powers but quite simply play the game as it create a silver lining in their pockets both in terms of official perks and all the unofficial perks they
must be enjoying.
The current batch of 534 MNA’s have done nothing but bash their tables or quite often staging a walk-out in protest. I have occasionally had the displeasure to watch this circus on TV and it appears that these illiterate hooligans quite often simply don’t understand the issue at hand let alone comprehend its importance for its benefits or disadvantages on behalf which may impact the very constituents who elected him into office in the first place. (For earlier ATP posts on some interesting MNA behavior, see here and here).
Dr. Awab Alvi blogs as Teeth Maestro and is one of the people behind Help-Pakistan.com and Bloggers.pk.
What does ‘Expense for Constitution’ and ‘Daily BETA’ mean?
I would like to apologize for the error, yes I think I should stand corrected, be it 534 or 342 the idea is to highlight the wastage of money spent on this ghost assembly.
All the above figures do not make arithmetical sense. No accountant will accept them. For example, what does “Expense for constitution per month” mean. Do they get paid RS 100,000 per month all the time or only when they are working on the constitution? Similarly, it is not clear if other expenses are paid on “actuals” basis or are paid regardless of whether an expense has been incurred or not.
To be able to comment meaningfully on their salaries and expenses one would have to have, first, the correct and quantifiable figures for salaries and benefits and then compare them with the salaries and benefits of other people in the government, say, the judges, the generals and federal secerataries etc. and also with the parliamentarians elsewhere in the world.
As for as the usefulness and competence or otherwise of this parliament, that is a question for a seperate discussion.
Yasser, very good of you to catch that. I had seen this floating around some weeks ago but had not caught it. I see that it is from the original source linked to this piece (newspaper: The Observer). I have been scratching my head of where they got the 534. Even if you count the 100 in the Senate it is 442.
But on the numbers, I am not a fan of this particular Assembly but I think the numbers are not as unreasonable as they look. None of these numbers are especially unusual and if you did the same for upper-middle class officials in private companies, or even bureaucrats you will find that the numbers are similar. Paying our lawmakers too little will create a whole set of different problems.
Yes, I agree we want better MNAs and a functional Assembly but as we move in that direction lets not create conditions under which no one half-decent will even think of going into politics.
While these are eye-opening stats- if true- … could you please point out how you arrived at the number 534?
As far as I can see…. there are 342 MNAs in total- including all reserved seats.
Mistakes like these severely shake the credibility of an other wise illuminating piece of information.