DAKAR: Senegal’s president has announced that he plans to introduce a law which will indefinitely suspend the country’s 100-seat senate in order to redirect the money to help victims of this week’s flooding.

According to his comments published Wednesday by the state-run news agency, President Macky Sall said the budget used to run the senate is close to 8 billion francs ($1.6 million). If the law passes, this money will be consecrated to finding a solution to the now-yearly cycle of flooding in Dakar.

The Senegalese senate has long been an object of criticism, seen as a way to reward loyal party workers who did not get elected to the larger National Assembly. Unlike the deputies in the assembly, more than 60 out of 100 senators are appointed by the president.