Skopje, 17 August 2023 (MIA) – The law on wages which will also regulate the wages of elected and appointed officials is currently being drafted, said Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski on Thursday.

“Four and a half months have passed since the Constitutional Court’s Decision which raised the wages of officials. The Government has initiated the drafting of a law on wages which is set to regulate the highest wage in the country and, based on the appropriate criteria, will regulate the other wages as well. This is an exceptionally complex law, over which those who are not a part of the executive branch of power have to be consulted as well,” said Kovachevski in answer to a journalist’s question.

The PM noted that the officials did not raise their own wages back in April, but that their wages were aligned as a result of the Constitutional Court’s decision.

“The wages of 44 members of the Government, mayors, MPs, judges, prosecutors… were previously unconstitutionally and illegally frozen by the Government of VMRO-DPMNE, which was never discussed by the former Constitutional Court. The current Court discussed it and concluded that it is illegal, because it leads to a situation in which a finance minister and the president of the country have a lower wage than a secretary at the Agency for Electronic Communications or a head of a public enterprise,” said Kovachevski.

The PM stressed he identified this even before the Constitutional Court’s decision and initiated the adoption of a law on wages, motivated by the fact that he noticed a directorial post in a public enterprise or a secretarial post in a regulatory agency had higher wages than the president of the country, which, according to him, is unacceptable.

Photo: MIA