The People’s Majlis has passed to deduct 35% from the Maldives President, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s salary as a cost-cutting measure to ensure state expenditure is lowered.

The Majlis Public Accounts Committee had investigated the motion seeking to reduce salaries provided to executive members of the state, by the parliament. The investigative report was passed by 64 members present at Wednesday’s virtual sitting.

The details of changes proposed by the committee to the salaries of executive branch positions have been publicized as well.

As such, president of the Maldives currently receives a monthly salary of MVR 100,000 with no added allowances and the vice president receives a monthly salary of MVR 75,000 with no additional allowances.

Further, 20 of the ministers in the Maldives have a basic allowance of MVR 42,500, living allowance of MVR 15,000 and phone allowance of MVR 1,000, totaling MVR 58,500 each. The complete total is MVR 1,170,000 for ministers and MVR 1,345,000 for the entire executive branch.

Under the changes that have been proposed in the committee report, 35% will be slashed from the salaries of the president and the vice president while 30% will be slashed from the salaries of ministers.

In this regard, the president will get a basic salary of MVR 65,000 and the vice president will get MVR 48,750 as a basic allowance on a monthly basis under the changes.

Further, ministers will receive a monthly salary of MVR 45,750, including the MVR 15,000 living allowance and MVR 1,000 phone allowance.

The complete total of pay deductions for the executive board reaches MVR 1,028,750.

As for the changes proposed by the committee, to the monthly pay of Members of Parliament, the Parliament Speaker currently receives a monthly salary of MVR 73,125 including a living allowance of MVR 20,000 and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament receives MVR 91,000 in total, with MVR 20,000 for living allowance and an additional MVR 20,000 as committee allowance.

While the People’s Majlis has 85 MPs, each of them receive a monthly pay of MVR 82,500 including MVR 20,000 for living allowance and an additional MVR 20,000 as committee allowance.

The total spent for salaries of Majlis members sits at MVR 7,176,625.

However, with the proposed changes, 30% will be slashed from the speaker, deputy speaker as well as MPs.

With this change, the speaker will receive a monthly allowance of MVR 57,188 which is a MVR 15,938 deduction per month.

The deputy speaker will receive MVR 75,700 per month which is a deduction of MVR 15,300 per month and members will receive a monthly salary of MVR 69,750 per month, which is a MVR 12,750 deduction for each MP.

With this, a total of MVR 1,114,988 will be cut on a monthly basis for Majlis members.