The Knesset Finance Committee on Wednesday approved NIS 247 million to budget ministers-without-portfolio and deputy ministers, with NIS 147 coming in cash and the balance and IOU. Ministers without portfolio are basically a concept that was started to find a cabinet post for people who in essence, are unnecessary to run the government, but without a cabinet post, a coalition agreement would be impossible.
Over the years, the number of ministries continues to increase, at times, splitting the jurisdiction of existing ministries into two to create jobs. Some of the ministers without portfolio do not really have any significant responsibilities, and they become liaisons to one office or another. They do however enjoy ministerial budgets, office operating budget, vehicle, driver, and at times security and other funding enjoyed by ministers who oversee agencies.
Other monetary outlays were approved as well, including NIS 3.48 million for former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, for his car, office, staff and security. The law entitles a former prime minister to such an arrangement for five years, so the committee in essence approved NIS 17.4 million.
Significant sums were also approved for a number of government ministries.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
2 Responses
Why do you have a picture of dollars when where talking about NIS ?
dollars, shekels, it doesn’t matter. what matters is that you have people going hungry, bituach leumi backed by laws, which the kenneset pass, that do everything they can to leave people who have are out of work, or handicapped, in financially desperate situations. they don’t have enough money for to staff the hospital’s properly (one of my daughters works in one and told me what is going on), the military needs more money to protect us properly (instead of ridiculous talk of more disengagement), etc. etc. It is appalling that they get away with this. As far as giving Olmert anything, he embezzeled enough while he was in office that he should be paying back instead of receiving. Sigh, but then again, we live in the middle east, and Israel is more of a democracy than any of our surrounding neighbors. As an Am we need to all work on Teshuva, helping others in gentel, intelligent ways to do teshuva, and help bring the Moshiach in a peaceful manner, instead of the way we seem to be headed. It is the end of Elul, it is time to push ourselves to reach our potential, the potential HaSh-m gave every one of us, and work to improve ourselves and by doing that our Am. Shana Tova