The Committee, presided by the Chair, Dimitri Khundadze, deliberated sundry legislative proposals.

Deputy Minister of Health, Tamar Gabunia introduced the Bill on Public Health with II reading.

According to the rapporteur, the purpose of these changes is to provide a basis for the Government to establish the terms and conditions of health and accident insurance for the entry and / or stay of the relevant aliens and stateless persons, taking into account the epidemiological situation.

The Committee approved the document to the Plenary.

D. Khundadze introduced the Bills for I reading at his own initiative on: Social Assistance, State Pension, State Compensation and State Academic Stipends.

According to the rapporteur, all three Bills deal with the issues of legalization of overpayments for various reasons and release of beneficiaries from the obligation to return these funds to the state.

The initiator clarified all three Bills and provided information to his colleagues on individual cases.

According to the submitted legislative initiatives, before April 1, 2021, over-issued subsistence allowance and social package, over-paid pension as well as over-issued state compensation are considered legit and are not subject to refund.

In addition, such amounts already paid back in any form to the state budget of Georgia are not subject to refund. Relevant persons will also be exempted from the financial obligations arising from the over-accrual and issuance of compensation from the state, which, according to the initiators, will be another expression of the support of the recipients of compensation in the light of the economic problems caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Besides, the bill also provides for the termination of administrative, judicial and enforcement proceedings related to the return of relevant funds to the state budget.

Thus, as the rapporteur noted, in case of adoption of the draft law, the overpaid subsistence allowance and social package will be legalized and the relevant persons will be released from the financial liabilities

In case of all three bills, 1 844 141 GEL will be consumed by 3223 beneficiaries.

According to the members of the Committee, the bills are definitely to be upheld, but such cases when people have financial obligations to the state independently of them should be minimized through designated mechanisms.

The Committee unanimously approved the documents to the Plenary.

According to the rapporteur, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Khatuna Totladze, the Bill on State Compensation and State Academic Stipends was conditioned by the need to correct the gap in the current law.

As she elucidated, in accordance with Article 15 of the Law: "A person with the highest diplomatic rank shall be awarded compensation upon attaining the age of 65, the amount of which shall be one third of the average remuneration defined based on the last one year for the position held by them by the time of the termination of their powers”.

According to her, the shortcoming of the current wording of the article is demonstrated by the fact that the compensation is calculated according to the salary of the last one year of the last position, which is sometimes linked to the very low salaries of 15-20 years ago and puts in an unequal position those who, for example, completed a diplomatic career 15-20 years ago and those who retired 5-10 years ago.

As the rapporteur elucidated, the current wording of Article 15 is inconsistent with one of the main objectives of the law - to encourage the circle of persons who have performed special service before the state. In fact, the amount of state compensation calculated in accordance with this edition is so small that in many cases it does not exceed the amount of state pension established by the Law on the State Budget of Georgia for 2021.

In order to solve the problem, the Bill envisages the calculation of the compensation according to the salary set for the respective position at the time of awarding the compensation.

The Committee unanimously endorsed the document.

The Committee also discussed the legislative proposal submitted by Zurab Vanishvili, a citizen of Georgia, regarding the basic principles of the draft law on the Employers' Charter (amendment to the Labor Code of Georgia) and considered it inappropriate to submit it as a legislative initiative.