Rare cross-party agreement has been reached to provide MPs with 100% of their annual benefits packages after they have served three five-year terms of office.
The sub-committee of the whips forum — which includes chairs of committees, ANC MP Geoff Doidge and the DA’s Sandra Botha, who is also a house chairperson — has also achieved broad agreement that MPs’ salaries should be at a level of a chief director, which is in the region of R580 000 a year.
The sub-committee has also advised the Moseneke commission — headed by Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke and which makes recommendations about parliamentary salaries as well as those of judges and magistrates — that MPs should receive a 13th cheque. At present MPs earn a salary roughly in line with that of a director of a government department — about R400 000 for the lowest-paid MP. This includes a car allowance, but not a housing allowance.
According to current regulations, MPs earning in that range would get a much smaller pension of about R6 000 a month if they failed to be elected for a third term, as opposed to getting 75% of their annual package under the new proposal, which has also been lodged with Moseneke.
According to the proposal if a MP serves just one term he or she will get 50% of the salary of a parliamentarian.
A source who did not want to be identified said that there had ”not [been] a shred of opposition” from the parliamentary whippery from all political parties.
According to another source a similar pension proposal was mooted when Tony Yengeni was the ANC chief whip. However, that proposal did not see the light of day — and Yengeni is unlikely to reap any rewards.
The current whips, including ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe and official opposition chief whip Douglas Gibson, apparently resurrected the Yengeni plan, and formed the sub-committee in July this year to deal with the matter of parliamentarians’ salaries and benefits.