Ministry of Finance has said that they do not maintain a list of details or numbers of political posts appointed by the President, saying it is not under their mandate.
Ministry of Finance has said that they do not maintain a list of details or numbers of political posts appointed by the President, saying it is not under their mandate.
However, former Finance Minister Mohamed Shafeeq has previously said in a press conference that the Finance Ministry does keep these records. Although he said a the time that he would provide this information, it was not done even by the time he resigned.
Due to this, Mihaaru News submitted a Right to Information (RTI) request tot he Finance Ministry seeking this information.
In response, the Finance Ministry stated that they do not maintain a list of details, or numbers of political appointees. They said that the salaries of political appointees at various ministries is overseen by the relevant ministries.
They said that the Finance Ministry holds records of the total number of staff at each ministry that salaries are paid to.
The Finance Ministry further said that salaries to political appointees come up to less than 4 percent of total salaries paid by the government, which is 1 percent of the State budget.
The government has previously announced that salaries of political appointees will be decreased by 10 percent from tomorrow onwards. The Ministry said that with this change, 10 percent will be saved from the 1 percent of State budget used on salaries of political appointees.
Mihaaru has also submitted RTI requests separately to all ministries to find out the number of political appointees in each ministry. Details from the ministries which have disclosed this information to date indicate that the number of political appointees reach 1,496.
Some ministries are yet to respond to the requests.
The government has previously claimed that the total number of political appointees would not exceed 700.
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