THE RULING coalition on November 25 passed a proposal to freeze the salaries of some state officials. The governing parties came up with the proposal in response to an initiative by opposition deputy Daniel Lipšic of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), who had demanded that the salaries of politicians, judges and prosecutors remain unchanged next year, the SITA newswire wrote.
The deputy chairwoman of the Smer caucus, Jana Laššáková, said that instead salaries would be frozen for Slovak MPs and MEPs. The president, cabinet members, state secretaries, top representatives of central state administration bodies, heads of the Statistics Office and the Antitrust Office would also receive the same salary next year as this.
However, the head of the social security provider Sociálna Poisťovňa and heads of state-run companies would still get a rise since the measure would not apply to them, Laššáková said. Salaries of judges and prosecutors would also increase.
The partial salary freezes will save the state Sk12 million (€398,000). They were proposed as a response to the financial crisis.
Opposition deputies Klára Sárközy (SMK) and Stanislav Janiš (SDKÚ) criticised the measure, which they said was completely incomprehensible. Janiš asked why the measure would not affect the head of Sociálna Poisťovňa, directors of state-run health insurance companies, mayors, judges, prosecutors or mangers of state-run companies. “Do they have low salaries?” he asked.
Sárközy added that MEPs salaries are in future supposed to be made equal, regardless of which countries they're from.
