AMMAN — A
controversial and ill-timed decision to allocate a JD200 bonus to
Lower House
members has sparked nationwide anger forcing the House’s Permanent Office to
issue a denial on Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
The bonus was said
to compensate the deputies for the recent rise in gasoline prices and was taken
one day after the government approved a new hikes in fuel prices, the third in
as many months.
Deputies had said
that the JD200 per month bonus was to compensate for fuel rises. The average
monthly salary of a lawmaker is JD3,500.
Legal experts
interviewed by
Jordan News stressed that the decision violates the law,
and will add to the suffering of the citizens who have to cope with price hikes
and cash shortages.
Advocate
Hassan Al-Hattab, representative of the Geneva based International Committee for Human
Rights, said the increase is a clear violation of the Constitution and the
Lower House bylaws, and that it burdens an already exhausted public budget
without justification.
Hattab said the
government should not have resorted to the latest hike in fuel prices when
global crude prices are stabilizing, reiterating that the bonus is a
provocation of citizens, a violation of the General Budget Law and of the
Constitution.
Lawyer Laith
Nasraween said if the increase in the salaries of MPs proves to be real, it
will be in clear violation of the provisions of the Constitution, specifically
of Article 76/2, which stipulates that members of the House of Representative
shall only receive allocations determined by law.
Deputy
Saleh Al-Armouti, however, said that the recent allocations does not violate the
Constitution since deputies’ salaries did not increase, and that JD100 was
provided as a transportation allowance and another JD100 was given for legal
research.
He stressed that
these funds were not given by the government, but from allocations granted in
the budget to the House.
In the midst of
the public uproar surrounding the bonus decision, the Permanent Office of the
House of Representatives said on Tuesday that the remuneration paid to the
directors of the offices of representatives, amounting to JD200, was for a
period of two months only.
The office added
in a statement that the remuneration was given in recognition of the work
pressure office managers worked under when the House was in recess in the
months of June and July this year.
It indicated that
the remuneration would have been disbursed from the “rewards item” in the
parliament’s budget, which is being disbursed by virtue of the powers granted
to the Speaker of the Lower House and the Permanent Office, and that the
government would not incur additional expenditures as a result.
“All the false news
reported by some media and social media sites about the increase in deputies’
salaries is completely untrue, as the deputies do not receive salaries since
they are not considered employees, but are elected representatives whose monthly
remuneration does not entitle them to receive pensions, according to the
Constitutional Court Decision No. 2 of 2014,” it added.
It stressed that the
Parliament is aware of the extent of financial pressure the Jordanian citizen
are subjected to as a result of high fuel prices and the high prevalence of
unemployment and poverty.
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