The Assembly of the Republic approved, on May 5, 2021, in general and by consensus, the Draft Law that Approves the Statute of Employee and Parliamentary Agent. The document, which grants special privileges and privileges to civil servants assigned to the Assembly of the Republic, is being contested in many sectors of society. There is an understanding that the approved law gives privileged treatment to this professional group in the context of budgetary restrictions caused by the most diverse reasons, such as: hidden debts, which led to the suspension of direct support to the State Budget; the drop in state revenues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic; the humanitarian crisis, due to the armed attacks in Cabo Delgado.
The context of budgetary constraints that the country is going through makes the approval of spending on officials and parliamentary agents even more inadequate when millions of Mozambicans – including civil servants from other institutions – suffer restrictions due to the economic and financial crisis.
The entry into force of the Law on the Statute of Employees and Parliamentary Agents will entail more costs for the State's coffers. In the last 4 years (2017 to 2020), the expenses of the Assembly of the Republic (AR) with staff have been increasing significantly. For example, expenses with salaries and salaries and other personnel expenses in the Assembly of the Republic rose from about 757 million meticais in 2017 to about 2.069 million in 2020, an increase of about 173%, in a period of four years, which is equivalent to an average increase of about 328 million meticais per year.
