The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Prime Minister in his state of the nation announced that he would be slashing Nu 50,000 per month from his salary and giving it to a charity at the end of five years.This would come to Nu 600,000 per year and Nu 3 mn in five years.
The PM said, “Many people have criticized the salary in-crease for MPs and cabinet ministers. I will not defend theincreases nor argue whether it is too high or not. However, on the Prime Minister’s salary, I too agree that it is too high. Our country cannot afford it, and my conscience will not be able to accept it. As such, I will take same salary of Cabinet Ministers’. I offer to save the additional monthly amount of Nu. 50,000 (for the Prime Minister above Cabinet Ministers’ pay) and donate to charity organizations at the end of the five years.”
This will mean that the PM who was entitled to get Nu 180,000 as per the National Assembly’s de¬cision and the Finance Ministry’s proposal will only get Nu 130,000 per month which would be equiva¬lent to the pay of ministers.
The PM announced this decision while referring to the recent Pay hike for civil servants. The PM said that the salaries of civil servants and other public servants will cost the government an additional Nu. 1.799 million per year.
He said some are worried but the government has already identified how to meet the costs.
Explaining the pay hike structure he said for civil servants the existing salary allowances have been merged to their basic salary and on that increased by 4% to 10%. Plus everyone gets a house rent of 20% of the new increased salary. The real salary in-crease is from 24% to 30% with lower levels getting more and 40% raise for GSP and ESP levels.
There had been much controversy with regard to the overall pay hike made worse by a confusing and almost unreadable pay hike report from the Finance Ministry with even some media outlets getting the percentages wrong.
