ON the front page of this edition of Today is a story titled, MPs in massive chop-chop, and the report is very disturbing, because it shows the extent to which Members of Parliament, elected by us to represent us in making laws will go to rip Ghana, us, off.
According to the story, MPs have devised disingenuous means of making money off Ghana.
THE report listed three means by which they do that. One, Members of the House?s Select Committees charge the Ministries GH?2.000.00 (?20 million) for each MP when they go to meetings to discuss the Ministries? estimates in the 2013 budget. Such meetings are part of the job description of MPs for which they are paid GH?7,200.00 (?7,200.00) per month. Yet they greedily charge the Ministries GH?2,000.00 per day?s sitting at those meetings, and then they intentionally delay proceedings so that they could sit for say three days to make more money.
TWO, the MPs choose as meeting venues for these state assignments 4-star and 5-star hotels and the state has to pay out huge sums, even when each ministry has a conference room where the meetings could be held.
Three, at such meetings in the plush hotels, each MP is entitled to two coffee breaks per day and that costs the Republic of Ghana $80.00 per day.
WE on Today are saddened by these disclosures. We are, because there is already in the public domain news of the huge sums of monies MPs are given over a four-year term. When MPs come into the House at the start of a term, each is given $50,000.00 as car loan, but at the end of the term we could be told it has been converted into a state loan for the taxpayer to pay.
TODAY, each MP is paid not less than GH?7,200.00. That salary itself is too high for public officials in a country that has so many children learning under trees. Indeed, it is higher than salary levels enjoyed by top management in big multi-national companies.
The same MPs are also paid huge ex-gratia monies when the term ends.
NOTE, we did not say when they leave Parliament. The law must change so that re-elected MPs do not receive ex-gratia payments. The dictionary says, ex-gratia (payment) is ?done from a sense of moral obligation rather than because of any legal requirement.? So why should an MP receive as high as GH?220.000.00 as end of service payment?
AFTER receiving so much and billed to receive so much more at the end of a four-year term, why are MPs still so greedy for more of Ghana?s money, to the extent that they will device disingenuous means to ? let us face it ? ?steal? money from us?
OUR MPs like to compare themselves to MPs in other African states and say they earn so much and so much. What they forget is that Ghana is not even an averagely-rich country by any standard. Ghana is a poor country where more than 70% people live with the drudgery of tough economy to make ends meet day-by-day.
RIGHT now we finance by ourselves possibly less than 30% of our annual budget, hospitals lack too many needed equipment, the healthcare system is collapsed, the education system is craving massive rehabilitation, and yet contemporary national administration is bursting with such incompetence.
IN such a country, where more than half of the population are economically vulnerable, it is a crime, a felony, for a president and MPs to connive to pay the president GH?12,000.00 (?120 million) per month, a minister of state GH?10,000.00 (?100 million,) and an MP at least GH?7,200.00.
WE on Today are of the conviction that it is not too late to slash those salaries, and re-invest those monies into building our country.
