By: Melanie Aanyu

Members of Parliament yesterday passed the Parliamentary Pensions (Amendment) Bill, 2022, and adopted a report by the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee with a recommendation to increase lawmakers’ salary by 5 percentage points.

The recommendation, according to Parliament spokesperson Chris Obore, does not have a legal effect since it was not part of the original amendment to the Bill.

He added that the President who heads the Executive, which owns the budget, already applied brakes on pay rise for legislators.

In the changes to the MPs’ pension law, the monthly contribution by each member has been varied from 15 percent to 20 percent.

The implication, according to some parliamentarians and Finance ministry officials, is that the corresponding government contribution to individual lawmakers’ monthly pension share will increase from the current 30 percent to 40 percent, meaning more taxpayers’ cash will be applied to bankroll the pension scheme for the 529 legislators.

A lawmaker presently earns about Shs11m, minus allowances, placing them in the bracket of relatively highly-paid public servants.