Just Saying | Hong Kong’s lawmakers deserve a pay cut and punishment for behaving like infants and failing to fulfil basic duties
Yonden Lhatoo says we may laugh at their antics in the legislature but there’s nothing funny about wasting taxpayers’ money on people not doing their jobs
I have to say I’m glad Hong Kong’s lawmakers won’t be getting a basic pay rise when the new legislature is elected in September. Frankly speaking, they don’t deserve it, the way they’ve been carrying on over the past year.
But they’ll be compensated for it with a generous pay bump when it comes to operating expenses.
While their monthly salary will remain unchanged at just over HK$93,000, annual reimbursement for expenses such as employing assistants and renting offices will be raised by 7 per cent to HK$2.55 million. A term-based allowance for information technology expenses will be increased by 50 per cent to HK$375,000.
That’s a lot of taxpayers’ hard-earned money for a bunch of people who are mostly very well off, if not already rich. Many of them treat their Legislative Council job as a part-time gig for pocket money and prestige, and can hardly be bothered to attend meetings and discharge the duties they were elected to perform.
Dysfunction is the name of the game. Just look at all the bloody-minded, spite-driven filibustering over the past year by pan-democrats blocking government policies just for the heck of it.