MPS PAID E3.4M WITHOUT PARLY SITTING

MBABANE – Members of Parliament (MPs) have jointly earned a monthly salary of about E3.4 million while sitting at home.

After a month of having no sittings, the House of Assembly will finally sit today albeit for the swearing in of new Prime Minister (PM) Cleopas Sipho Dlamini. The basic salary for MPs is about E47 708 per month and this excludes other benefits which include 15 per cent of their basic salary for housing allowance, and other allowances for their cars, communication and constituency allowance. The total amount they earned while being at home was about E3 482 687.

Allowance

The only amount the legislators will be missing out on is the E350 which they claim as sitting allowance per sitting. There are 73 members of Parliament who include the 59 elected members, 10 appointees and the four women MPs who were elected at regional level. The last sitting the legislators had was on June 21, 2021, where they were locked in about a five-hour long caucus discussing issues pertaining to the delivery of petitions to their constituencies. During the caucus, according to some of the MPs, it had been agreed that the legislators await delivery of the petitions to all tinkhundla centres then return to the House to debate the issue. However, this did not happen as the House was adjourned sine die by the Speaker, Petros Mavimbela.

Some of the interviewed legislators said they deserved to receive their salaries because they continued to work in their tinkhundla centres despite the House not being called to a sitting. “We are MPs and deserve our salaries, especially because we also use that money from the salaries to help out some of our constituents,” said Mhlume MP Victor Malambe when interviewed last week Thursday. Another MP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, blamed the Speaker for not calling the House in the past month.
“I strongly believe that the unrest that followed at the beginning of the month would not have taken place had the House been meeting,” said the legislator.

Petitions

He said the MPs would have come back to the House to deliberate on the petitions issue and map a way forward on what government could do in particular with the common concerns which were raised at the tinkhundla such as job creation. He said for Parliament to be quiet during these past few days was not acceptable. “The constituents still have faith in some of us and we could have called for calm,” said the legislator. The Speaker, when contacted by this publication over a week ago to comment about what Parliament had to say about the then tense situations, had said they would issue a statement soon. However, to date nothing has been said.   

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