The Pan African Parliament (PAP) has considered a proposed US $26 million budget to run the legislature’s activities and programs for 2018/2019.
presented by the chairperson of the Committee on Monetary and Financial Affairs, Michael John Temple (Swaziland), the proposed budget indicate that there is 35 per cent increase compared to the previous year’s budget of U S$19 million.
According to Mr. Temple, the increase is due to the addition of extra Programme activities and the inclusion of rental of the PAP official residence in the 2009 budget.
He noted the other costs that spiked the budget were salary inflationary adjustments, increase in educational allowance, travels, communication and ICT maintenance among others
The budget focuses on enhanced legislative capacity, increased oversight of the PAP, representation of the African people and building institutional capacity of the legislature, will be forwarded to the African Union Commission budget for consideration.
While demonstrating support for the budget, Prof. Geoffrey Lungwangwa (Zambia) noted that the PAP has operational difficulties, which even affected elections that were recently held for the leadership of the PAP.
“It took us long to conclude our voting system. In my Parliament, voting takes only two minutes because we do electronic voting. You don’t have to use a register,” Prof. Lungwangwa said.
With regard to the overall management of the budget, Hon. Thandi Modise (South Africa) suggested removing the burden of accounting for the budget to the PAP Bureau instead of leaving it entirely to technical staff.
She therefore, recommended revising the rules of procedure so as to highlight the role of the President in the PAP budget since he is ultimately accountable to PAP in the management of the funds.
Prof. Morris Ogenga Latigo (Uganda) attributed the bloated budget to the reluctance by the South African government to implement fully the host agreement. He said this was contributing to leakages of the PAP resources towards paying for the residence of the President.
