With unfounded attacks on the investigation done in MANS’ report, the Service of the Parliament tries to conceal that, during the past year, MPs worked in plenary sessions five times less than an average citizen, although they received salaries three times higher than average.
In its latest statement, the Service of the Parliament criticizes the methodology for monitoring the work of the Parliament, although they know that this methodology has been taken over by relevant international organizations, and that MANS has been using it for more than ten years. In addition, in last year alone, we have asked each MP three times to give their statements in order to improve the methodology and received no objections or suggestions.
Unfortunately, the Service of the Parliament obviously did not want to become acquainted with the facts, instead, they turned to manipulation. First, it is completely untrue that our data do not contain information on the control role of the Parliament; moreover, in our reports, the entire chapter is dedicated to this matter, and we are monitoring the work of precisely those parliamentary committees that use control mechanisms. Second, for more than a decade, it is known that the international methodology we use measures the activities of MPs in the plenum, where decisions are made, and not in committees whose members are only certain, elected MPs. Third, the activities of the President and Vice-Presidents of the Parliament are measured separately when they appear in these roles, especially when they speak as MPs, which is also stated in our reports and on the MANS website.
The Service of the Parliament had all this information, but nevertheless decided to intentionally and, at the very least, maliciously try to draw attention from the data on the very modest work of the MPs in Parliament’s plenary sessions last year.
The facts collected through our monitoring, which are not disputed by the very Service of the Parliament, show that during all plenary sessions in 2018, MPs worked for 324 hours, i.e. 40 working days.
Compared to an average citizen of Montenegro who worked around 1 800 hours, i.e. 225 working days last year, this is five times less. At the same time, for their work, the MPs were paid around €1,500 on average, while the average salary in Montenegro is around €500.
Thus, in the past year, MPs worked five times less at the plenum than the average citizen, while receiving salaries three times higher.
Complete analysis see HERE
Danilo Kalezić
Coordinator of the Parliamentary Programme
