Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am informed that over the last 10 years, Mauritius Post Ltd. has recruited 462 officers in total out of which 106 officers have already resigned. With your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will now list the number of recruitments made for each year from 2015 to 2024 – (i) 2015: 56 (ii) 2016: 17

You can file it if you want.

I will file that but I would still like the attention of the House with regards to last 3-4 years, with your permission.

Okay.

So – (iii) 2021: 14 (iv) 2022: 35 (v) 2023: 6 (vi) and for the House, 2024: 181 officers have been recruited by the Mauritius Post Ltd. It is good to note that the then Minister for IT emanated from Constituency No.9 and out of this 181 people, 99 were recruited from Constituency No.9 and they talked about meritocracy in that government. An hon. Member: Laptop eklate laba !

(Interruptions)

Not just that, linn manday so prop leader, linn donn li zis 58, kouma zot abitie fer without meritocracy and linn manday so bann lezot koleg ousi. How can it be possible that 99 people out of Constituency No.9 only met the requirements for that position.

Incroyable!

Are we fooling ourselves or we fooling the public? So, they ended fooling at the public for so long.

63 Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are currently not sure whether the procedures and the principles of meritocracy was respected or not, as part of that recruitment process since the queries addressed – and I say it loud – to the HR Manager of Mauritius Post Ltd were not answered to satisfactorily. The Board, which is an independent entity, will be called upon to take the necessary actions. An audit exercise may also not be excluded at this stage. Additionally, I am informed that as at June 2024, the Mauritius Post Ltd has incurred a loss of Rs86 m. – like so many other institutions under the rule of the MSM Government. Further, the company had a shareholder’s deficit of around 2 billion and the State of the Economy actually revealed that the pension deficit amounted to Rs2.6 billion and this did not prevent them from recruiting at will, just for political mileage. As hon. Shakeel Mohamed pointed it earlier, to have some cheap political points out of the ailing population. But again, that was not enough, they still had the liberty and audacity to go and acquire a new vehicle for the then new CEO at Rs3.6 m. There is this company called Proguard Ltd which has a contract of Rs1.2 m. every month for delivering remittance, parcels and emails whether or not services are delivered.

Hon. Minister, can you please stick to the question.

I am sticking to the question.

We are talking about officers who were recruited for the past ten years.

Yes. I am sticking to the question.

Yes, please!

And I believe that I have, by now, answered the question.

(Interruptions)

Unless there is a supplementary, thank you! An hon. Member: That’s a good one!

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, will the Minister be in the position to enlighten this House on the number of vacancies we had pre-recruitment and whether, there have been new positions created to recruit those people and if they met all the training required?

Okay, let’s start with the training element. It seems contracts for training were allocated on the basis of MoUs between the Mauritius Post Ltd and the NPCC.

64 Though they are both Government entities, training contracts were actually allocated at the back of MoUs, which we believe, is against the concept of good governance. Now, having said that, with regard to the supplementary question, I do not have the information with me at the moment but I will certainly table same. Thank you.

Thank you! The hon. Second Member for Rivière des Anguilles and Souillac! CONSTITUENCY NO. 13 – CREMATION GROUNDS & CEMETERIES – SPACE AVAILABILITY