CAIRO: Over 100 independent members of the People's Assembly, including the Muslim Brotherhood bloc, filed a request to withdraw confidence from Minister of Finance Youssef Boutros Ghaly Sunday, Brotherhood MP Farid Ismail, told Daily News Egypt. The MPs accuse Ghaly of misappropriating LE 3 billion of social insurance and pension funds to cover up the government's national budget deficit which resulted from faulty financial strategies adopted by the Ministry of Finance. The request was rejected, however, when MPs affiliated with the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), who have a parliamentary majority, voted against it. Ismail told Daily News Egypt that the withdrawal of confidence request followed 10 parliamentary interpellations in which Ghaly was questioned about "the national budget deficit, the failure of the Ministry of Finance's strategies, the increase in local and international debt and soaring unemployment rates. Ghaly's decisions, says Ismail, meant that "many widows will not be able to get their late husbands' pensions and the rights of the people who had spend their life working very hard to get a decent retirement package will be lost. However, the Ministry of Finance had recently announced that it has finalized a controversial draft social insurance law that the PA, the Doctors' Syndicate and the ministry have been debating over the past year. The new law, which constitutes one chapter of the insurance law, is said to raise retirement fees to a minimum of 70 percent of employees' salary, increasing it from the current law's 50 percent and at the same time allowing pensions to be inherited. It will also provide a LE 100 fixed pension for unemployed senior citizens over 65. To finance this new law, the ministry plans to invest the monthly social insurance fees that are deducted from employees' salaries. However, according to Ismail, "There is nothing that the independent and Muslim Brotherhood members can do in the PA more than file requests . this request will go down in history. The requests that are filed against the government or its cabinet ministers, said Ismail, are "always rejected by the PA. The situation will remain unchanged so long as the NDP has a majority of seats in parliament, he added.
