The teachers cannot have a raise, because the government says it is broke. Soldiers and police officers are being demobilized so officials can shift some money to social spending.
But the budgets for the National Assembly and the Senate will increase by more than half this year, because lawmakers say they are working harder and need more assistants and advisers.
The assembly’s budget for 2001 is $7.41 million, an increase of 52 percent over the $4.86 million it spent in 2000. The Senate’s budget this year is $3.59 million, an increase of 54 percent over 2000’s budget of $2.31 million.
The $11 million slated for both houses of the legislature is less than 2 percent of the more than $650 million the government will spend in 2001. But lawmakers were roundly criticized last August when National Assembly members approved a $600-per-month pay raise for themselves.
Chan Ven, the National Assembly’s deputy secretary-general, said lawmakers need the budget increase “for helping people. Members of parliament need more money for gasoline and materials, when they are on missions to the provinces” to see constituents, he said.
The money doesn’t go into lawmakers’ pockets, but will pay for “constructing schools, pagodas, and [supplying] rice and food and other needs” for constituents, he said.
Oum Sarith, secretary-general for the Senate, said senators face similar demands as well as higher costs for “meetings abroad and communications with foreigners.”
He said expenses will rise even higher in August, when each senator will move into his or her own office.
“With more rooms, the expense of electricity, water, sewage and phone will rise,” he said.
He said the Senate had asked for an even bigger increase—to $4.87 million—but it had been cut back to $3.59 million.
Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers Association, said Tuesday it is wrong to spend so much on the legislature when teachers had to go on strike to fight for a living wage.
“I think this money for the legislature is a bribe, so that lawmakers will not demand an increase in salary for civil servants,” who earn an average of $20 to $30 per month, he said.
“The money should go to civil servants. Society cannot develop” until civil servants earn enough to live on, he said.
Rong Chhun’s union, which urged police and civil servants to join the teachers’ strike, sought an increase to $100 per month.
Government officials have said they can’t afford to give the teachers a pay raise. It would cost about $67 million—or nearly 10 percent of the national budget—to give the nation’s 80,000 teachers a $70-per-month pay increase for a 12-month period.
