Hanimaadhoo Constituency MP Abdul Ghafoor Moosa expressed his concern today in Parliament regarding the current block grants being given to local councils being insufficient due to an influx of work.

During today's debate regarding South Galolhu Constituency MP Meekail Ahmed Naseem's resolution to increase the salary of councilors, Ghafoor said that the block grants were arranged when the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) was the majority in Parliament and that since then, more deliverables have been handed over to councils. The monitoring of mosques and changes to council salaries also occurred after the block grant had been determined, said Ghafoor.

"Along with that, managing waste in islands and other efforts need to be conducted. The current percentage requested for the block grant is not enough to manage councils," stated Ghafoor.

He said that Parliament MP's need to think deeply about the matter.

While speaking about the salary increment for councilors, Ghafoor said that the ongoing issue is that there are administrative staff who receive higher salaries than councilors and that this is not how it should be.

"There is an issue where administrative staff members in the council have a higher salary than the council president. Some people do not want to talk about this in detail," as was said by Ghafoor.

According to him, this issue needs to be sorted and one way it can be done is to reduce the high salaries of Civil Service staff within the council.

Ghafoor alleges that the reason why some council administrative staff have higher salaries than council presidents and members is because the Parliament did not seek an opinion from the Pay Commission before bringing about the changes.

The resolution to increase the salary of councilors presented by South Galolhu Constituency MP Meekail Ahmed Naseem in seeking the opinion of MP's was ejected today from Parliament.  When voting on accepting the resolution into Parliament, 14 MP's voted to accept the resolution, while 48 MP's voted against it.