The Ministry of Justice submitted for public discussion the Draft on Amendments and Additions to the Law “On Advocacy”.

It is noted that taking into account the current mechanism of allocating funds from the state budget to the public defender’s office, in order to solve the problems described above, that is, to provide public defenders with social guarantees equivalent to the employees of state bodies, the draft proposes to allocate money for additional salary to the Public Defender’s Office in the amount of 20 percent of the salary fund according to the legislative regulation, from which both bonuses, additions, including overtime pay, and rewards will be paid.

“In order to implement the mentioned changes in practice, it is necessary to provide the Public Defender’s Office with additional funds in the amount of at least 20 percent of the official rates of the Head of the Public Defender’s Office and Public Defenders from state funds.

As a result of the adoption of the project, “The Budget line 11001: “Public Protection Services” measure, an additional 93 million 774 thousand 720 drams will be required to be allocated annually. The amount required for the rest of 2023 is planned to be allocated from the Government’s reserve fund,” the justification states.