Government administration staff to receive 30 pc pay rise

Budapest, June 23 (MTI) – The government will increase the salaries of office personnel by an average 30 percent, daily Magyar Idők reported on Wednesday.

Quoting Nándor Csepreghy, state secretary at the prime minister’s office, the paper said that the hike in the lowest-paid positions could reach 50-70 percent. The government will use savings on scrapping ministerial agencies, totalling “several billion” forints to cover the increase, the paper added.

In the first phase of the plan 17,000 clerks in municipal and district offices will be granted higher pay as of July, Csepreghy said. He said that the second phase, from January next year, would affect another 16,800 people at county-level offices.

Concerning the elimination of agencies, Csepreghy said that some 20 percent of public administration employees would be laid off. This year, 3,000 of them could “move into the private sector following a retraining programme”.

Out of 90 government agencies 44 will be shut down by March 31, 2017. Most functions of the agencies to be scrapped, including the national pension administration directorate and the national health fund, will be taken over by the remaining government organisations.

Source: mtva.hu