In the National Assembly |12 November 2019
Budgets approved for the Office of the President, department of legal affairs, public administration
During its first committee stage for budget 2020 yesterday, the National Assembly debated on and approved the budget heads for the Office of the President, department of legal affairs and public administration in full.
The whole of yesterday’s sitting was attended by Vice-President Vincent Meriton and principal secretary for finance Damien Thesée, accompanied by the individual heads of each of these departments.
The first to appear before the National Assembly was the Office of the President, represented by principal secretary for Administration in the Office of the President Yvonia Richardson, with a sum of R74,884,000.
Anse Etoile MNA, Ahmed Afif, asked for a justification as to why the allocation for ‘other allowances’ has increased from R1.15 million to R1.85 million and why ‘goods and services’, particularly security enforcement, has seen a reduction from R40 million to R34 million.
“The increase in salary is related to promotions that will be given as well as for salary enhancements, the long service allowance, the change in scheme of service and the 5% salary increase as from next year,” Mrs Richardson clarified.
She further explained that the amount for security enforcement will reduce significantly in 2020 due to the fact that they are no longer paying for security officers for the late President Albert René, who passed away this year.
Following various other points made in regards to the budget for the Office of the President, its budget of R74.8 million was approved.
The proposed budget of R140,318,000 for the department of legal affairs was also later approved during the afternoon session.
The budget for this department is divided into two allocations: R121,683,000 for the Attorney General’s Chamber and R18,635,000 for the Registration Division.
However, it was only the Attorney General’s Chamber, represented by the Attorney General Frank Ally, which had to come in to defend its budget.
He was followed, in the late afternoon, by the chief secretary for public administration Jessie Esparon who was defending the 2020 budget for the department of public administration (DPA) which stands at R22,347,000.
The budget was also approved with 22 members voting in favour.
Meanwhile the budgets for the Seychelles Intelligence Service (R13,358,000) and department of defense (R330,909,000) were discussed in private during the Defense and Security committee session.
Elsie Pointe