How Comfortable It Is to Sit in Three Armchairs!

Baku / 28.12.17 / Turan: Information of a number of agencies that in 2018 expenditures for the maintenance of the Milli Majlis (parliament) will be added 1.2 million manats, in addition to 25 million 432 thousand manats envisaged in the draft state budget, gave rise to rumors of increase in the salaries of the MPs. Even the specific amount of the increase is reported - AZN 800 for ordinary MPs, and even more impressive sums for the chairmen of committees, vice speakers and the parliament speaker.

Is not it excellent news before the New Year? No less "pleasant" are also reports on raising the minimum wage for 145,000 of our citizens who receive beggarly wages of 116 manats, the size of the criterion of need and the subsistence minimum. More than 1 million Azerbaijani pensioners are eagerly awaiting the approach of 2018; they have been promised an increase in their pension in the amount of an increase in the average monthly salary for the reporting period.

The website Olke.az, to find out the reliability of rumors about MP salaries, reached a member of the parliamentary committee on economic policy, entrepreneurship and industry of the Parliament Vahid Ahmedov. He denied rumors about raising salaries for MPs.

On the other hand, it is necessary to take into account the "political aspect" in the country, when a large-scale crisis of the banking system is still going on, the economy is falling, and companies are being closed. The coming year promises a new wave of staff dismissals, worsening of the social status of people, because the measures taken by the government are not able to curb the inflation rate. Against the backdrop of negative forecasts, the increase in the salaries of MPs would have been perceived inadequately by society, to put it mildly.

However, it seems that our MPs are not very vexed by the failed action to improve their financial situation. Many of them, besides the MP seat, occupy two or three chairs, receiving no less than a salary. For example, Sahib Gafarov, a member of the Azerbaijani delegation to the PACE, also works as a pro-rector for international relations at the Baku Slavic University. MP Javid Gurbanov concurrently holds the post of chairman of CJSC Azerbaijan Railways.

But Ziyad Samedzadeh is generally a virtuoso in combining several posts - and by no means on a voluntary basis. He is a full member of ANAS (National Academy of Sciences), chairman of the Committee for Economic Policy, Entrepreneurship and Industry of the MM, teaches at the Baku University of Business, and is chairman of the Association of Economists of Azerbaijan and a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences, and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Igtisadiyat. All of these positions assume payment for work. Mr. Samedzadeh was also elected a member of the Dissertation Council of BSU (Baku State University). Do not think that this membership is free: as it was possible to find out, for a review written for each scientific thesis, he receives a high fee.

But next to the long list of posts occupied by Mr. Samedzadeh, his colleague on the MP corps Eldar Guliyev looks more modest. He is "torn" between the work of the chairman of Azerittifag and the rector of the Azerbaijan University of Cooperation, where education is paid.

MP Huseynbala Miralamov is chairman of the ruling NAP (New Azerbaijan Party) Khatai district organization, adviser to the President of SOCAR, and head of the department at the Azerbaijan State University of Oil and Industry.

A list of our parliamentarians combining several official and paid positions can be continued. Moreover, it is possible to add current and former high-ranking officials. The head of the Baku Executive Power Hajibala Abutalybov simultaneously holds the post of head of a laboratory at the Institute of Physics of ANAS. It is interesting if the Mayor finds time for scientific research and if he still remembers the way to his institute.

Being Minister of Education, Misir Mardanov was the head of a department at BSU and was a rare guest at the university. After his dismissal, he returned to science, and now he works as a director of the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics. Former Minister of Communications and Information Technologies Ali Abbasov is also employed: he is an adviser to the President of ANAS and the head of a department at the Azerbaijan State Economic University, lecturing students on the basics of the digital economy.

We will not speculate on how many MPs, current and former officials occupy two or three or even five positions. Counting money in someone else's pocket is indecent. The question is if this staff policy is correct, as it does not allow young specialists to go forward and take up positions, and make a career.

If parliamentarians and officials were released from their second positions, many vacancies would open for prospective scientists, engineers, managers, teachers in the system of ANAS, universities, SOCAR, etc. The created situation, apathy and hopelessness force capable young people to leave Azerbaijan and to benefit the science and economy of foreign countries. -0-