7 Public Entities Refuse To Reveal Data On Maximum Wage: Auditing Organization

Hesham Genana, head of the Central Auditing Organisation (CAO) said that seven public entities refused to reveal information about maximum wage of their employees reported Al-Watan newspaper on Monday. The news was confirmed by a source at CAO who stated they could not provide additional details.

Genena revealed the identity of five of the seven entities; the State Litigation Authority, the State Council, the Courts of Appeal and Cassation and the Public Prosecution.

He added that while some public bodies divulged detailed information on the salaries of their employees, other refused to give any information to the CAO, while some provided insufficient information.

Other public bodies gave misleading information concerning the imposition of a maximum wage on its employees including some that claimed they adopted the maximum wage while some of their employees get extra money from other public institutions exceeding the fixed ceiling.

Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has issued a decision fixing the minimum wage for civil servants at LE42,000 ($6,000), the equivalent of 35 times the minimum wage of the employees in the public sector set at LE1,200 ($171).

Although, three similar decisions were announced by several governments since January 2011, none of them have taken full effect. Some of the previous decisions gave exemption for select bodies such as public commercial banks, who recently organized a protest rejecting the decision.

The non-implementation of the decision has always been attributed to the absence of a database to identify the officials whose monthly income exceeds LE42,000 as the paychecks of senior officials is not indicative of their total revenue.

The salaries of officials rarely exceed a few thousand pounds per month. Supplements, which can amount to several tens of times the monthly salary, are in the form of bonuses.

Source: Ahram Online