People's Majlis goes into recess after fruitful session

Following the end of a productive last session of the 19th parliament 2019, the house has gone into recess.

Parliamentarians went into recess after completing 53 percent of the house’s work.

While the parliament’s agenda shows that the second session records a total of 569 hours and 57 minutes of work. A total of 77 sittings had been held by the end of the first session of the 19th parliament.

The first session saw a total of 47 sittings, with 30 sittings in the second session where parliamentarians worked a total of 63 days.

Parliamentarians spent a total of 128 hours and 37 minutes at sittings, 92 percent of whom were present for sittings.

The last session saw 395 committee meetings which lasted a total of 441 hours and 20 minutes.

Speaker and former president Mohamed Nasheed revealed that each member had in fact worked for eight hours each day during the session.

Some of the work that was completed during the last session include 23 bills out which work on 16 bills began and work for 11 was completed, leaving 28 bills incomplete.

While five resolutions were forwarded during the last session, members had worked on 12 incomplete resolutions from the previous session.

Work on two resolutions was completed by the end of the second session.

State-submitted issues total 16, with the MPs having worked on two incomplete issues from the previous session. MPs completed 17 of the state-submitted issues, leaving one incomplete.

The parliament house took up six cases during the previous session, followed by 17 cases in the last session. Work remained incomplete for all the cases.

Seven cases were forwarded by MPs during the last session, all of which were completed by the end.

While 24 cases were submitted to question ministers, completed were 12 cases.

The house went into recess with Speaker Nasheed having declared that this was the most productive session out of the two for 2019, going on to praise the members for their resilient work.

Major bills passed by the 19th parliament during his year include the amendments to the Fisheries Act and the Decentralization Act as well as the passing of an Income Tax Bill and the state budget for 2020.