It is immoral to raise the wages of government officials in a country where almost one million of people are extremely poor, the head of the parliamentary group of Heritage Party Zaruhi Postanjyan said at a parliamentary briefing on Friday.
"This bill discriminates the rights of our citizens - for it is designed for a group of no more than 1,000 people who keep rigging elections," Postanjyan said.
She believes that the MPs who just push the buttons like Galust Sahakyan and Hovik Abrahamyan do not deserve a raise. "The 240,000 AMD they get now is already too much for them. And what is most outrageous is that during the same session they have adopted a bill annulling doles for jobless people," Postanjyan said.
On Oct 23 the Armenian Government submitted to the Parliament a bill on wages of top government officials, this implying the president, the ministers and the MPs.
The bill suggests raising their wages in 2014 and adopting a single remuneration system for civil servants.
The bill covers some 30,000 people and needs as much as 35bln AMD. The wage of the president will be increased by 203% from 436,000 AMD to 1,223,000 AMD, the wage of the prime minister by 218% from 335,000 AMD to 1,190,000 AMD. The wage of a minister will be raised by 139% to 600,000 AMD – 132,000 AMD more than the wage of an MP.