First lady's contract on regular basis, CSC tells parliament

President Dr Mohammed Muizzu's wife Sajidha Mohamed was granted no-pay leave for a period of four years from her job in the Health Ministry but was awarded a contract not under a special regulation, but as part of the regulations that have been in place since 2014, the Civil Service Commission (CSC) said on Monday.

Sajidha, who is the Senior Scientific Officer of the Maldives Food and Drug Authority (MFDA) under the Health Ministry, has been given no-pay leave for four years upon becoming the current First Lady. On the 7th of this month, the Health Ministry awarded Sajidha a contract.

The Independent Institutions Committee of Parliament began investigating the matter. The CSC members were produced before the committee on Monday.

There is no obstacle to the First Lady holding a government job under the current laws, Commission Chairman Mohammed Naseeh said at Monday's committee meeting. Though, this is the first time such a problem has occurred, he noted.

"This is the first time that a CSC employee has come to be the First Lady of the country. The existing laws don't prohibit that. That's why we responded [in the media] that there is no legal spirit," Naseeh said at the beginning of his speech.

Naseeh said:

"The Health Ministry has also requested that they also want the services of the First Lady. She has served there for a long time and her experience is important to the agency. So if they get that contribution in some way, they want to continue", Naseeh said.

With that, the CSC recommended, according to Naseeh:

"Therefore, we advised that she could be dismissed from her job without pay for four years under the regulations. The agency could make it a wage employment by the MFDA and fix an equivalent wage," Naseeh said.

"The first request sent by the Health Ministry said that the First Lady did not want to take a salary. She had offered her services as a voluntary service”.

However, under the regulations, you cannot work without pay, he said.

“Therefore, under our instructions, the Ministry of Health carried out the work and signed the contract on the 7th of this month”.

A copy of the contract has been sent to the CSC.

"She will be paid 40 hours as working hours and MVR 75 per hour as wages. So, from the 7th of this month, her contract has been effective," Naseeh said.

Therefore, under the contract, Sajidha will receive a maximum of MVR 3,000 per month. 

The committee members expressed their concern that Sajidha was awarded the contract outside rules. However, Naseeh and other members of the commission who attended the committee denied this.

“There are already employees in the civil service and other ministries who work this way,” Naseeh said.

"People who are permanent employees in ministries have been released from their jobs under no-pay for the duration of the project. They were dismissed from their jobs, brought in to work only under the contract of the project”.

He mentioned the following figures:

Replying to questions from the committee members, Commissioner Mohammed Farusath said that former First Lady Laila Ali also worked for the Health Ministry in a contract job during the government of her husband, former President Mohammed Nasheed.

That, while not a civil service contract, the first lady had worked in a government agency, and “how to go out and how to go in and how to behave” had been tested at the time, he noted.

In addition, although Sajidha was in charge of employees in her previous job, she will not do so under this contract, he said.

“Instead, she will monitor [the employees],” he said.

Asked whether Sajidha would work at home or in the office under the contract, Commission Chairman Naseeh said Sajidha would work at the Food and Drug Authority.

Under the Presidential Salaries and Allowances Act, the President's spouse is required to be paid an allowance. The allowance is one-third of the President's salary. Therefore, Sajidha will receive MVR 33,333 as a monthly allowance.