NON-PAYMENT of salary arrears to Members of Parliament (MPs) yesterday made the country’s legislators angry, temporarily stalling business in the House.
The MPs, DAILY GUIDE learnt, had a closed-door meeting on Tuesday and deliberated on a number of grievances including non-payment of salary arrears and accumulated allowances, which have been pending since 2009.
Although the lawmakers did not publicly disclose the content of their deliberation, their mood showed that they were virtually up-in-arms against the leader of government business, Cletus Avoka, for not giving them any assurances on the matter.
The agitation of the MPs compelled Speaker Justice Joyce Bamford-Addo to suspend yesterday’s sitting for 30 minutes, after some angry lawmakers had threatened to cause mayhem in the House.
The MPs were worried they might not get money before the House would rise today after a meeting that had travelled for more than 13 weeks.
The suspension of business at yesterday’s sitting was to allow the majority leader to brief the Speaker on the grievances of the MPs for them to brainstorm on how to address those concerns.
A number of MPs told DAILY GUIDE they were terribly broke after contesting the parliamentary primaries.
“Most of us are highly indebted to banks from which we took loans for our campaigns and these banks are chasing us for their money,” an MP told DAILY GUIDE.
“How are we going to find money to execute our campaign during the forthcoming elections since most of us are already indebted to various banks?” another MP asked.
“We want to receive our salaries because we do not understand why we should continue to approve budgets for salaries of public sector workers to be paid and yet ours would be pending,” another lawmaker bemoaned.
DAILY GUIDE gathered that the MPs were demanding the payment of their ex-gratia before the end of the life of this Parliament in order to avoid another ex-gratia brouhaha like what happened in 2009 when the end-of-service benefits of the previous Parliament were frozen.
It would be recalled that President Mills froze the ex-gratia of MPs who served in the fourth Parliament of the fourth Republic following street agitations by groups like the Committee for Joint Action (CJA) over the size of benefits approved for MPs.