The government would need to spend an extra $493 million over the next three years to raise civil servants’ salaries to levels demanded by Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party, the Council of Ministers said in a statement released Monday.
In order to increase average civil servant’s wages to $100 per month, the government would have to increase the amount it spends on workers’ salaries by at least $82 million every year for the next three years, the Council of Ministers statement said.
“To raise the civil servants’ salaries to $100 by 2007, we need more money for our budget,” the statement said.
Currently, the government is budgeted to spend $166 million on workers’ salaries in 2004. If the proposed raise took effect, it would spend $413 million on salaries in 2007, it said.
For months, Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party have been lobbying the government to increase civil servants’ salaries to $100 per month from the current average of $30 per month. The subject has been a contentious topic between Funcinpec and the ruling CPP in their negotiations aimed at forming a new coalition government.
While the Council of Ministers did not rule out a pay raise for government workers in its statement Monday, it suggested that a drastic increase would not likely be possible until 2007.
The statement added that “crises such as SARS, bird flu, terrorism, floods and droughts, and the regional economic crisis” have “seriously affected the national budget.”
“We can offer $100 if our economy improves,” Khieu Thavika, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said by telephone Monday.
“As the government, we want the civil servants to have a higher salary, but we have to do it step by step,” he said.
The government hopes to increase its revenues by cracking down on corruption and collecting unpaid taxes, Khieu Thavika said.
“We will try our best to collect all taxes and we will get rid of trafficking and the smuggling of goods,” he said. “Currently taxes have not been collected totally.”
The figures offered by the Council of Ministers are based on estimates that the government has 325,000 civil servants, including teachers, police, and ministry officials, the statement said.
However, that number has been contested by Sam Rainsy Party officials, who claim the government pays about 70,000 “ghost officials”—or names that appear on government payrolls, but who either do not exist or do not work for the government.
The number of civil servants working for the government is actually closer to 250,000, opposition leader Sam Rainsy said in a statement last week.
This claim was refuted by the Council of Ministers in its statement Monday.
“Some officials have said there are 70,000 ghost figures. This claim is not true,” the statement said. “According to the census, we found only 9,000 ghost officials,” it said, referring to an unspecified 1998 government poll.
Khieu Thavika said that most of those 9,000 “ghost officials” had already been eliminated from government payrolls.
In a telephone interview last week, CPP spokesman Khieu Kanharith said the issue of raising civil servants’ salaries must be approached cautiously.
To give the raises, he said, the government would have to eliminate 37,000 civil servant jobs, ensure economic growth of at least 6.7 percent each year and reduce spending for national security and defense by at least 2 percent each year.
To demand otherwise, he said, would be “irresponsible.”
Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker Son Chhay on Monday suggested that the government could make up for the pay raise in part, through revenues lost through gasoline smuggling.
An estimated $85 million could be recouped from tax revenue lost to gasoline smuggling alone, he said.
Citing a yet-to-be published 2003 World Bank report, titled “Investment Climate Assessment,” Sam Rainsy said that nearly $400 million is lost through corruption and unpaid taxes.
“If we can get rid of corruption and collect all taxes, and put those [lost funds] straight into the national budget, we can make at least $400 million per year,” Sam Rainsy said in a May 19 statement.
The World Bank report has not been officially released and details sources of lost revenue, not corruption, World Bank economist Huot Chea said Monday.
“That figure is not yet official. It is a draft only,” Huot Chea said.
