RESPONDING to a question whether any officials were receiving more than one allowance under the same category, by AKEL deputy Irini Charalambidou, the office of the Accountant-General named former DIKO leader and former President of the House Marios Garoyian. Now, just a deputy, Garoyian receives two allowances for the employment of a secretary – €3,019 per month as a former President of the House and €1,025 as a serving deputy.
Although he is entitled to the two allowances by law and he has done nothing illegal this is still a scandal – a lawful form of theft from the impoverished state that is being kept afloat by assistance from abroad. Does Garoyian actually spend €4,044 a month on secretarial services? No. He is just a deputy – and not a very active one – and the €1,025 allowance he receives should more than cover his needs for secretarial services. This means the remaining €3,000 is part of his income on which he pays no tax because it is an allowance.
We doubt the deputy has offered to return this allowance to the state or donate it to a charity given that it is not being used for the purpose it is paid. Of course, the DIKO deputy is not to blame for the absurd laws, designed to give former top officials as much state money as possible for as long as they are alive. Everybody knows that former presidents of the Republic and of the House do not spend €500 a month on secretarial services, so why are we paying them six times that amount, on top of the fat pension they receive? Garoyian is in his early fifties so we could be paying him for secretarial services he does not use (not to mention providing him with state limo and police bodyguards) for another 30 years.
This squandering of public money is a scandalous provocation at a time when people depend on food handouts to survive. Former presidents of the Republic and of the House receive very generous state pensions which are more than adequate to cover the cost of occasional secretarial services they might require. Of course all our elected officials are at it. Does the average deputy spend a grand a month on secretarial services? No, but the allowance for secretarial services was thought up by deputies as a way of boosting their monthly remuneration, without paying any income tax on the amount.
It is a lawful form of theft, a lawful way of receiving money from the state under false pretences. Somehow, we doubt deputies would be rushing to change the law that allows Garoyian to collect €4,000 for secretarial services he has no need for every month, because the secretarial services scam benefits them as well.
