Ex-gratia is our salaries being paid to us - Sam George defends

Sam George says 70% of ex-gratia is salary difference owed MPs

MPs don’t know their current salary – Sam George

Akufo-Addo should set up an emolument committee to determine salaries of MPs - MP

Ningo-Prampram Member of Parliament, Sam Nartey George, has indicated that the general public has some misconceptions about the ex-gratia paid to Members of Parliament (MPs).

Nartey George explained that a bulk of the money given to MPs as ex-gratia is a difference owed them by the government because their salaries were not determined when their term began.

The MP, who was speaking in a Good Morning Ghana interview monitored by GhanaWeb, further stated that currently, the salaries of MPs in the 8th Parliament of Ghana have not been determined yet, which means that when a new salary is set, the difference in the amount due them will be added to their retirement benefit (ex-gratia).

He added that the amount given to MPs at the end of their term seems huge in the eyes of Ghanaians, but the fact is that parliamentarians are rather losing because the value of salary which should have been given to them months ago decreases with time.


“A lot of ex-gratia talk is going on… people wake up and say all kinds of things about ex-gratia… 70 per cent of the money paid to us (as ex-gratia) is salary differentials. As we sit here today, we don’t know our salary as MPs.

“I prefer that my salary is paid from day one because the bulk salary given to us has no value. In 2021, if you were to pay me GH¢10,000 at that time, that would have been $2000. If you pay me only GH¢7000 and you say you are accumulating the GH¢3000 which will be given to me at the end of the four years … that GH¢10 000 is no longer $2000; it is now $1500. So, I am actually losing the value of my salary thanks to the time value of money.

“They (the government) will wait at the end of your term; then they will put together your salary differential (GH¢3000) and add it to your ex-gratia amount (retirement benefit of MPs), which is what everybody thinks is ex gratia (the total amount given to MPs at the end of their term) and then we will all take the flak for it that they have given us money, it is my own money that is being paid to me; my salary that wasn’t paid to me,” he said.

He urged President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to set up the emolument committee so that MPs of the 8th Parliament who have been working for more than 18 months would know their salaries and conditions of service.

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