Courtesy The Daily News

Chief Government Whip and Urban Development and Housing Minister Prasanna Ranatunga said yesterday that newly appointed State Ministers will enjoy no privileges and therefore, they will not be a burden to the country.

Earlier only 20 Ministers were appointed and it became more difficult to maintain lots of institutions coming under Ministries with that scale.

For example, I have been assigned 35 institutions under my Ministry and it’s hard for me to work and supervise those institutions alone. But now we can assign new State Ministers to oversee those institutions. Then the status of those institutions can be improved. That is why new State Ministers were appointed today,” he said yesterday.

Accordingly, they will receive only the average salary of a Member of Parliament. Therefore, they will not be a big burden to the government. But,during the previous government, there were 88 State Ministers in addition to the Cabinet of Ministers. These 88 State Ministers were given all the privileges enjoyed by the Cabinet Ministers. In addition, a group of eight monitory members were appointed and provided Rs.600,000 per month as a salary in addition to the MP’s privileges,” he added