Parliament summons Antonio Mwanza for disclosing MPs emonuments
Antonio Mwanza
The National Assembly has summoned opposition opposition Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) spokesperson Antonio Mwanza to appear before it after he made a revelation on their allowances.
Mwanza has confirmed the development saying he has been asked to justify his claims.
The FDD Outspoken official says he will not be coward and has vowed to continue speaking for voiceless. He disclosed this in a notice below:
Fellow Comrades,
This is to inform you that I have been SUMMONED to appear before Parliament over my revelations on what WE as a country are spending, FINANCING our MPs.
Am expected to lodge my written response by Friday.
The truth has very few friends but I am always ready to walk that lonely path for the sake of this great country that I dearly love.
They never want us to speak but for as long as we have life we will continue to speak on behalf of the poor masses.
ALUTA CONTINUA!!!
Last week Mwanza made the revelations below:
The colossal amounts of money that our Members of Parliament are raking in terms of allowances, salaries, gratuity, upkeep and other benefits is a pure case of institutionalized theft. It’s highway robbery.
This is what your MPs get for dozing or shouting “Hear Hear Hear” in the House:
Sitting allowance: K3, 000 per sitting. Multiply that by 4 sittings per week, it comes to K12, 000 per month per MP. And if an MP sits in two committees he walks away with K9, 000 per day.
So in a month, one MP gets a whooping K48, 000 in allowances alone. Add a Salary of about K31, 000 to that, plus Accommodation allowance which is calculated at K500 per day plus upkeep allowance, plus tax free beer and food, the total amount we are spending to service one MP comes to a gigantic K100, 000 per month. Forget about the tax-free vehicle, traveling allowances, plus a staggering gratuity of about K500, 000 after five years of dozing and shouting “Hear Hear Hear!!!”
In short we are spending over K250, 000, 000 per annum feting our MPs. Preposterous!!!
What about Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Constitution Office Holders. Simply put, the poor are working for the politicians.
Now check those amounts and look at the state of the constituencies these same MPs come from, look at the poverty of their people.
How much does a qualified teacher, lecturer, nurse, police officer gets for serving the community? Masese.
The minimum qualification for being an MP is G12 or a certificate in Knitting, Photocopying and Binding, Plumbing etc but the minimum salary of an MP is K100, 000 per month. How? Why?
This COMMERCIALISATION of our politics has largely contributed to the dirt in our politics. People are ready to kill, steal, fight just to be in power or to hold on to power because of the lucrative nature of our politics. Our politics is no longer about service, it’s about money, deals, corruption and all sorts of negativity in man at the expense of the poor. This must change if we ever have to achieve sanity, decency and service to mankind.
We need an independent Commission of Emoluments to calculate and peg the emoluments of MPs, Ministers and all Constitutional Office Holders to stopped. This is legalised theft and it should be stopped. It’s immoral. It does not matter who is MP, you or me. it is simply immoral.
We need to revise and normalise these salaries and allowances. We cannot be working and paying taxes just to feed a handful of politicians. We are spending a bulk of our national budget paying salaries and allowamces to a few individuals leaving little or nothing for production and development. As long as we continue to expend most of our budgetary allocation on consumption and not production, Zambia will continue to wallow in poverty and destitution.