Egypt’s Govt. Increases Wages of Judges and Police Officers to Ensure Their Loyalty

The latest public budget records for the fiscal year (2016/2017) unveiled that the Egyptian government has deliberately increased the wages and compensations of both judges and police officers.

The shocking record reflects the government’s contradictory policy as it has repeatedly denounced the rise in the amount of wages and compensations in the public budget during the recent years -as it constitutes quarter of the expenses by 23.5%.

The Egyptian government has also claimed that it aims to control the increase in the amount of wages to achieve the financial stability in the light of the new reform program that started to implement.

However, the increase in wages and compensations among the employees working at courts and police services sectors have reached 13.8% which is 4 times the increase in the health and education sectors which increased only by 3.3%.

In fact, the total amount of money spent on court sectors in the current fiscal year (2016-2017) was estimated at 2.938 billion Egyptian pounds, an increase of 23% compared to the previous fiscal year of (2015-2016).

The amount of money spent on the court sector was 15.7 billion pounds in the current fiscal year compared to 12.8 billion pounds in the previous fiscal year. Moreover, the wages and compensations of the employees at courts sectors have reached 14.2 billion pounds in the current fiscal year compared to 11.4 billion pounds  in the previous year. This means that the amount has increased  by 2.728 billion which is almost 23.8%.

On the other hand, the total amount spent on the police services sector has increased in the public budget by 10.6% which is almost  3.213 billion pounds in the current fiscal year 2016-2017. In the previous fiscal year, the total amount was 30.2 billion compared to 33.4 billion in the current year.

In addition, the increase in the wages and compensations for the employees working in the police services sector reached 26.9 billion pounds compared to 24.7 billion in the previous fiscal year with an increase of 2.248 billion pounds which is nearly 9.1%.

Accordingly, the total increase in the wages and compensations for both the courts and police services sectors reached 46.8% which is equal to 228.7 billion pounds from the total increase in wages in the current fiscal year of the public budget which counts 10.6 billion pounds.

In this context, Magdy Hamdan, the deputy head of the Democratic Front Party, believes that the government’s distribution of the national wealth among certain categories working within the state’s administrative system is explicitly unconstitutional.

He explained that the government’s unfair policy violates the governing principles in Egypt, for lacking justice in wealth distribution, widening the financial and social disparities between members of the same society.

The executive authority is attracting segments of the state authorities by satisfying them financially and increasing their salaries regularly to ensure their loyalty and support to all the government’s decisions even if those decisions were against the people’s interess.

He also clarified that the increase in both the wages and compensations of judges and police officers four times the wages of doctors and teachers as appeared on the public budget is a new form of bribery as it will breach any approach for opposing the executive authority.” This is the cornerstone of dictatorship rule which is mainly based on suppressing the opposition and buying loyalty,” Magdy Hamdan said.

He pointed out that the current authority and the government would not dare to come close or reduce the salaries of judges and police officers in order to resolve the wages problem, which exploits a large portion of the state’s resources, to ensure the loyalty of these groups to the government. The Egyptian regime is building a shield based on loyalty that would stand up against any opposition voice to the regime that is tightening its security grip to rule the country.