Speaker Jemma Nunu Kumba at the parliament in Juba. May 29, 2023. | Photo: Awan Moses/ Eye Radio

The national parliament speaker says the lawmakers are being threatened over the delay to deliberate on the increment of civil servant salaries.

“All the members of the parliament have been threatened because of the wrong information going outside that the salary increment budget came to the parliament and the parliament is the one that refused to pass it,” said Jemma Nunu Kumba without naming entities.

According to Rt. Hon. Kumba, unnamed entities got the wrong information that a salary increment budget was tabled before the parliament, but the legislature refused to pass it.

Clarifying the matter, the August House Speaker denied the parliament has received a proposed increment budget.

“This is completely wrong information because we have not received any budget for salary increments in this parliament,

“We started asking since last year and we were told that the increment would be as supplementary budget, but it didn’t come,” she clarifies on the state-own TV SSBC  on Tuesday.

However, she said the national legislature expects the upcoming annual budget in August to incorporate the increment to address the outstanding grievances.

Now we are expecting this coming budget to have this salary increment in the new budget for the year 2023-2024.

The Minister of Public Service and Human Resources in September 2022 presented a revised budget tune of 658 million SSP to increase civil servant salaries.

In December last year, the Cabinet directed the Minister of Finance to prepare an additional budget to cover a new salary structure for government employees.

But these efforts never materialized despite public university employees threatening to lay down their tools due to the delay.