Daily Times

The news that parliamentarians are likely to enjoy health cover and lifetime pensions from taxpayers’ money with the start of the next fiscal year of 2017-18 highlights the priorities of lawmakers. If the proposal is implemented, it would impose an additional burden of some Rs 3 billion annually on the exchequer. Apparently, the National Assembly and Senate Secretariats will pay for the amounts spent on the treatment of parliamentarians from any private hospital in the country! Similarly, all those parliamentarians who complete a five-year term will be able to enjoy lifetime pensions.

Such proposals usually receive a unanimous response from both the opposition and the government, as was seen last year when politicians unanimously approved a hefty salary package for themselves.

Consider both the moral aspects and the optics of it all. What would it appear like to ordinary people in Pakistan, if not as parasitic behaviour?

Instead of using the institution of Parliament for improving the living standards of the common man, one is forced to conclude that our political leaders have made it a means of increasing their own income and privileges during their five-year term.

This generousness towards themselves must be juxtaposed with their actual performance over the last four years. It is on record that many members of Parliament never bother to attend Assembly sessions regularly or take part in the proceedings. For the National Assembly, these MPs are no more than occasional visitors, who come to safeguard their own interests instead of taking up issues of public interest. Amidst the worst economic conditions in the country, when unemployment is increasing and people are tormented by poverty, this class of MPs is busy doing what can only be described as mocking the poor.

One wonders if the members of Parliament have ever been so solicitous regarding the healthcare and pensions of the miserable masses that they are supposed to represent. *