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House leader bemoans 'paltry' allowance hike of 50%
Jakarta Globe - September 16, 2015
The Finance Ministry on Tuesday approved the House of Representatives' proposal to increase a range of incentives payments – for "intensive communications" to "honors" to utilities bills, among others – by up to 50 percent, which will guarantee legislators up to Rp 36 million ($2,490) a month in additional take-home pay outside of their base salary.
However, the House has slammed what it calls a "measly" increase, saying it had asked for a 100 percent hike.
"I think the increase is not enough," said Fahri Hamzah, the House deputy speaker from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). "If we receive more of course we can monitor the government more intensively," he said on Wednesday.
He also argued that the proposed increase was "nothing" compared the trillions of rupiah in government spending that the House was responsible for monitoring.
The total budget for the House, Fahri claimed, "only amounts to 0.00196 percent of the state budget," adding the House would likely apply for another increase next year.
Watchdogs, though, accuse the House of lacking a "sense of crisis" by demanding a hefty raise in allowances at a time of slowing economic growth.
"This proves the House is only thinking of ways to make more money for itself," Sebastian Salang, from the group Concerned Citizens for the Indonesian Legislature (Formappi), said on Wednesday.
He noted this was not the first time the House had sought ways to pocket more taxpayer money, having previously demanded – and failed – to get the government to foot the bill for down payments for new cars, as well as proposing a pork-barrel scheme for ostensible constituency-based development programs, and repeated efforts to secure trillions of rupiah to build a new House building with questionable facilities such as an indoor swimming pool and a spa.
While the House's latest bid has fallen short of its expectations, the raise in allowances still leaves legislators supremely better off than the vast majority of their constituents.
The Finance Ministry approved a monthly monitoring incentive of between Rp 3.75 million for regular legislators to Rp 5.25 million for House oversight commission chiefs, up from the earlier figure of between Rp 2.5 million and Rp 3.5 million.
Legislators will also receive another Rp 15.5 million to Rp 16.4 million in "intensive communications incentive," on top of the monthly "honors incentive" of between Rp 5.5 million and Rp 6.6 million. It was not immediately clear what these incentives were for.
Legislators will also receive Rp 7.7 million a month to pay for utilities, including mobile phone bills, up from the previous figure of Rp 5.5 million.
The total in approved allowances comes out to just under Rp 36 million for senior legislators – or 13 times the minimum wage in Jakarta of Rp 2.7 million.
Source: http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/house-leader-bemoans-paltry-allowance-hike-50/.
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