The municipal councillors on February 5 fixed the pay they will get for a meeting day at 400 lei, as against 90 lei paid to the councillors of the previous City Council, Info-Prim Neo reports. The Communist councillors and some of the members of the majority coalition, including the Council’s chairman Mihai Ghimpu, abstained from voting on the decision. Since the municipal councillors began working, they did not receive salaries for their activity in the Chisinau Municipal Council. The decision regarding the size of remuneration for councillors was put to the vote for several times, but was short of votes and could not be adopted. A sum of 938,000 lei was earmarked for paying salaries. According to preliminary estimates, this sum will be enough to pay the remunerations for September 2007-December 2008 for about 46 meetings. Since September 2007 until present, the municipal councillors held 13 meetings. Eugenia Ciumac, the head of the Accounting and Economic Analysis Division, said that the attendance at the meetings is monitored strictly and the absences will not be paid. After the decision was adopted, the councillor of the Moldova Noastra Alliance Oleg Cernei addressed to the Communist councillors, saying that he dislikes the dishonest persons, and invited those that abstained from voting to renounce the pays and not make use of the vote of those that are sincere. According to him, the sum of 400 lei is insignificant for a councillor that works in the CMC every day, discussing with the people, working as part of commissions, doing ground work and others, and the councillors should not be ashamed to take the remuneration. In response to Oleg Cernei’s statements, the leader of the Communist faction Svetlana Popa said that the councillors of the PCRM faction will transfer their pays to children’s homes. A number of wealthier faction leaders and municipal councillors said they will give their pays to the councillors that need remuneration for working in the Council. The leader of the Social-Democratic faction Eduard Musuc said that the municipal councillors should be remunerated correspondingly because they spend one week a month in the Council and should get not less than the councillors of the country that receive 300-400 lei for a meeting day. Eduard Musuc also said that if the pays are higher, the councillors will work more efficiently and there will be no corruption.