The Standards Commissioner has ruled that there have been no increases in the salaries of Cabinet members, the government said in a statement.
Commissioner George Hyzler was asked to investigate following a complaint put forward by independent candidate Arnold Cassola.
“Allegations that salaries of parliamentary secretaries had doubled as alleged in an article on The Shift News and as concluded by (Nationalist MP) Jason Azzopardi are absolutely baseless,” the report said.
The only movement in salaries were those based on a collective agreement for all workers in the public sector, as all salaries of Cabinet members are based on this agreement.
The report confirmed that there had been no increase in salaries and that Shift News had ignored the fact that the two parliamentary secretaries that were mentioned had taken their oath of office in the job in the middle of 2017, and therefore their salary in this regard was half of what is was in 2018, when they served a full year.
The government had not hidden any increases simply because there weren’t any, the statement said. “There was no breach of observance of regulations and ethical principles,” Hyzler said.
Full report here
