Steven N.State secretaries who are also Members of Parliament have had gotten a 52% salary increase, reports 24.hu. This means 16 state secretaries will receive an extra 700,000 Ft. (US $1,800) every month, from 1.29 million Ft. ($3,314) to 1.97 million Ft. ($5,061), and is backdated to when the government formed at the end of May.
These representatives will now earn a gross monthly total of nearly 3.3 million Ft. ($8,480), which is composed of their base salary as an MP of 1.3 million Ft. ($3,340), in addition to the 1.97 million Ft. for the honor of serving as a state secretary in the Hungarian government.
Although Chancellor Minister Gergely Gulyás said at the beginning of July that the government would be trimming its expenses, several pay raises have been given to government officials since then, including for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ministers.
Orbán told Kossuth Rádió in early July that the war in Ukraine precluded any talk of raising salaries for public workers, and that opposition politicians who talk of salary increases for teachers, nurses, police, and firefighters do not understand the difficult situation the country is in.
A week and a half later, Parliament voted on an omnibus bill that not only raised Orbán’s salary, but also gave him exclusive power to set the pay of government ministers and state secretaries. [Telex]
