Islamabad, June 7 The government led by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has approved a massive 500 per cent salary increase for the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Chairman of the Senate (Upper House), local media reported on Saturday.
The move comes at a time when Pakistan's economy is crippled by unending political chaos and huge unrest in the provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
"National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq and Senate Chairman Yousuf Raza Gillani will now receive a monthly salary of PKR 1.3 million. Previously, both high-ranking parliamentary officials were drawing a salary of PKR 205,000 per month," ARY News reported.
The massive increase, the report mentioned citing a notification released by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, will come into effect from January 1, 2025.
Earlier, the Sharif government had approved a PKR 519,000 monthly salary increase for Members of the National Assembly (MNAs) and Senators.
In March, the Sharif-led Pakistani government, which had initially made tall claims about launching austerity drives and cutting down on expenditures, had approved a staggering 188 per cent increase in the salaries of cabinet ministers, ministers of state and advisors.
The developments have been severely criticised by the citizens of the country who remain burdened with high taxations, job loss, inflation, high fuel cost, high electricity price, and a plethora of other problems.
Pakistan's economy has for long been surviving on loans received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with Sharif advising people to tighten their expenditures while asserting that it is only a recovery phase.
However, the back-to-back hikes in salaries of ministers, advisors, MNAs, Senators and now the National Assembly Speaker and Chairman of the Senate, have raised a serious question about the government's intentions.
Sharif, at the same time, continues to increase the number of his federal cabinet which stands at 51 members currently. The initial number of federal cabinet members stood at 21, which was increased to 43 later.
"First, they claim about the need for austerity, belt-tightening and what not... Then they claim that they would not pack their cabinet with ministers and advisors and later do the opposite. Skinning us all with taxes, job losses, inflation and blatantly towering up the number of cabinet members plus giving them massive salary hikes is just not done," a local resident in Islamabad had told IANS a few weeks ago.
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