Cost-of-living rises reach Knesset cafeteria

Sandwich and soft drink prices rise, just as MKs debate burden of heavy expenses

By ToI Staff 2 April 2012, 2:10 pm

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One of the Knesset canteens (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Cost-of-living increases, the subject of seething social protest last summer and again in recent days, on Monday hit legislators in the stomach and the pocket.

Prices in the Knesset cafeteria have soared by almost 40 percent, Army Radio reported. A small sandwich, previously NIS 8, now costs NIS 11. And the price of a can of Coke has jumped from NIS 5 to NIS 8.

The new company running the cafeteria won the contract to do so because its prices were lowest, a Knesset spokesman was quoted as saying.

News of the Knesset cafeteria price rises broke, coincidentally, precisely as Knesset members were arguing about efforts to reduce the burden of high prices on the public.

New Kadima head and opposition leader Shaul Mofaz told fellow MKs that the government had made a mockery of last year’s Trajtenberg Committee proposals for lowering the cost of living, finessing its key recommendations.

Gideon Sa’ar, the minister of education, countered by noting that Mofaz had introduced no socioeconomic legislation in the lifespan of the current parliament, and had only begun styling himself as a social affairs champion after winning the Kadima leadership last week.