Riga City Council (RD) Finances and Administrative Affairs Committee supported on Thursday, the 19th of January, amendments in regards to wages in the city council, providing an increase of pay for officials elected to the local government.
When making the decision on the increase of wages, deputies asked no questions. None of the deputies, opposition members included, signed up for debates.
Pay changes will see Riga Mayor Mārtiņš Staķis’ wage increase 1.7 times when compared with what he’s paid now. Currently his monthly wage is EUR 3 851. In accordance with rules of the Law on Remuneration of Officials and Employees of State and Local Government Authorities,
the wage of the head of Riga City Council will be EUR 6 415 a month.
The wage of RD chairman may be even larger, because it is dictated using a coefficient to calculate the monthly wage. The base wage for 2023 is set as EUR 1 137.46. For the wage of the mayor of Riga the maximum coefficient is set at six. The city council does not intend to apply the highest coefficient, rather the used one may be 5.64.
The wage of the vice-mayor will increase 1.6 times – from EUR 3 386 to EUR 5 346. The wage of chairmen of committees will increase from EUR 2 698 to EUR 3 469, and wage of their vices – from EUR 2 010 to EUR 2 559.
Wages of members of the city council are planned to be increased by more than EUR 600 – from EUR 1 270 to EUR 1 934. When it comes to wages, the city council will not apply the highest possible coefficient. The total influence on the municipal budget from the wage increase will be EUR 659 000.
Explaining the size of wage increase, the chairman of RD explained that
wages of officials are planned to be lower than they could have been.
But the general situation in Latvia is taken into account, as the wage of the mayor in Riga cannot be lower when compared with heads of other municipalities. The wage of the head of Jurmala is EUR 5 915, that of the mayor of Ventspils is EUR 5 175, and the mayor in Jelgava is paid EUR 4 436.
The wage increase is also necessary in order to set more competitive wages for various managing officials of RD, such as department directors, office and agency managers. There are 60 managing workers whose wages cannot be made more competitive without exceeding existing wages of officials. Staķis stressed that most of the available funding is used to increase wages for municipal workers.
As previously reported by LTV programme De Facto, last year’s passed remuneration reform for 2023 state budget, which needs to be reviewed by the new Saeima, lists allocation of approximately EUR 3 million towards increase of wages for various officials.
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