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Parliament blames late allowances payment on MPs
Published:  Jan 16, 2018 7:56 PM
Updated: 4:06 PM

Parliament today acknowledged that its members have yet to receive their allowances for the Dewan Rakyat sitting for November and December last year.

Parliament's corporate communication division said this was because allocations for the year 2017 had to be used to pay allowances for years 2015 and 2016, due to late claims made by the MPs.

"For November and December 2017, there were 299 claims made by MPs. However, Parliament was forced to prioritise claims made in 2015 and 2016, totalling RM1.33 million.

"As these claims were late, Parliament had to pay them from the current year's (2017) allocation after receiving approval from the Finance Ministry.

"As a result, matters in the current year (2017), particularly allowances for November and December 2017 totalling RM1.2 million, had to be delayed to 2018," it said in a statement.

It stressed that the issue was not due to an insufficient government allocation for 2017, but was instead due to having to use last year's funding to pay previous' years allowances.

MPs' allowances include for attending each parliament sitting, attending meetings, mileage claims, flight tickets and other expenditures.

The corporate communication division said it had previously issued a letter urging all MPs to settle their claims in the current year but this was not done.

It added that for MPs' convenience, a system was implemented to allow Parliament to directly book hotels and flights for MPs without them having to fork out their money first.

The issue of MPs not receiving their allowances for the last Parliament sitting was highlighted by Chinese daily China Press in a frontpage report yesterday.

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