Mohammad Bagher Nobakht who was speaking in a press conference on Tuesday said that despite the flood of opinions made public by different sources and the people as well, Cabinet’s official position had been communicated to the media; Mr. Nobakht admitted that some official outside the government would also contribute to the scandal, which would not reflect Cabinet’s official stance on the issue.
“The Cabinet and government in general would not restrict action against the inordinate salary bill figures to bare excuses, but it embarked upon a series of measures to target the roots of the problem which will be in several stages; government would rather avoid such embarrassing figures in salary bills of high-ranking officials and we admit that it had been quite unexpected,” Nobakht told the press conference. “Resignation of some of these officials have been approved, with some others laid off by the government; the number of these reach 13 so far.”
Mr. Nobakht also told the press conference that additional measures had also taken by government to effectively blockade loopholes in the rules governing the salaries and the resources at the disposal of possibly corrupt managers; “all privileges and hidden access to resources under apparently lawful action were reviewed and reformed; the Cabinet will also communicate the media all approved actions on salaries and payments,” he added.
“Some of government bodies avoided during few past years the rules of 3rd Development Plan, enshrined in Articles 90 to 96; we will work to rule out such exceptions to this rule with necessary warnings to the engaged organizations; government also has requested to ‘look at’ the processes inside the firms under organizations complicit in bypassing the law in order to exert more regulation; however, such measures should be welcomed by transparent and accurate media activity which would scrutinize even single cases of corruption,” he told the press.
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