The deputies of the tenth legislature are the most expensive of the last six years. Decisions of increases and bonds are reflected in the increase in the Congress budget from 2019 to 2025.
The current legislature, chaired by Nery Ramos in two consecutive years, completed a salary increase for deputies and recently authorized a bonus of Q3 thousand for the workers of that agency.
With the approved adjustment, the deputies receive monthly wages ranging from Q61 thousand 300 to Q97 thousand 300, while the authorized bonus for workers is an expense of Q6 million 582 thousand.
In 2019, Congress worked with a budget of Q773 million, according to the figures that the alliance for an efficient congress has collected.
For this year, this agency has Q1 thousand 464 million, according to the Integrated Accounting System (SICOIN), which reflects a 47% increase compared to 2024, when the expenses reached Q999.4 million.
The deputies had a base salary of Q9 thousand one hundred before the increase, which, together with bonuses, reached the Q29 thousand one hundred, with the exception of the members of the Board of Directors, who obtained other bonds.
The increase, which is still valid despite the suspension announcement, not only increased the base salary, but also maintained the bonuses that will favor the 160 deputies.
The Single Bonus of Q3 thousand, authorized last week, is exclusively for the workers of the lines 011 and 022. In these there are personnel with monthly salaries that reach the Q29 thousand, according to the public information ex officio that the Congress discloses.
The decisions of the legislators to increase the salary and grant bonds, in order to please the union groups, according to analysts, is an action to waste public funds, of the taxes paid by taxpayers.
Waste
Rubén Hidalgo, director of the Central American Institute for Political Studies (INTEP), believes that the Legislative does not reconsider where its resources come from. “Taxes are limited resources, product of the work of a people who strive every day for the development of all, but the deputies, with tantrum attitudes, irresponsible and little transparent, take actions on everyone’s money,” he criticized.
“They arrive at Congress for a personal project and do not take care of resources,”
Rubén Hidalgo, INCE.
For the analyst, the work of the deputies is not justifiable with the salary that were approved.
“Unfortunately, Congress, this legislature, has had a waste of money in exchange for a very poor performance of the deputies, of these representatives who call themselves parents of the country,” he emphasized.
Authoritarianism
In addition to the low criteria to administer resources, the political analyst Renzo Rosal considers that the measures taken by the current Board of Directors are dangerous.
“We are seeing a mixture of waste and authoritarianism because there is no one who controls them. The deputies, with the bonus, also seek subordinates because they do not want anyone to bring them from within, and have the employees happy,” he said.
According to Rosal, the deputies seek to evade social inspection and that is why they have not appeared to meet. “It seems that they are giving him long to end the first session, so that we all forget the matter. It is a mockery scenario,” he added.
“They suggested that this legislature was different, but the agenda has come out,”
Renzo Rosal, independent political analyst.
No differences
The way the current Board of Directors has managed to Congress is similar to that of the Vamos Block, says Francisco Quezada, from the National Economic Research Center (one hundred).
“The Board of Directors follows the same line of managing resources and budgets as the previous administrations of the Congress, but with the difference that this is an even more daring directive, because the past did not dare to a salary increase,” said the analyst.
The deputies are absent from work without accountability, and, despite this, they obtain bulky wages that, at the discretion of Quezada, do not deserve.
“Congress is an entity that, in general terms, has shown that it is unproductive. It has very specific tasks where it does not reach the minimum quality parameters or presence; they do not exercise their supervisory role well and the normative role leaves much to be desired,” he said.
The current Board of Directors on several occasions to have made decisions about the salary increase, although it had already been authorized.
Subsequently, given the criticism, he announced that he would suspend it, but so far there is no act that establishes that measure.
They defend bonus
Alfredo Tumax, secretary of the majority union of the Congress, defended the bonus approved by the Board of Directors chaired by Nery Ramos.
“We are the most important state agency in the country, but we are the smallest in terms of staff,” he said in the Congress building, that in three weeks he has not housed any plenary session.
Tumax added that the bonus was “the result of a job, union work”, and that it had the support of workers in general, but the remuneration excludes personnel 029. Among the beneficiaries are people with salaries of Q29 thousand.