Puducherry, Aug 26 (IANS): Puducherry Lt Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan has said that the Union Territory has spent 93 per cent of budget outlay during the fiscal year 2020-21. She said that the government incurred an expenditure of Rs 8,342 crore against the total outlay of Rs 9,000 crore.
She said that the Puducherry has achieved this feat despite the raging Covid-19 pandemic.
The Puducherry Lt Governor was delivering her speech in Tamil on Thursday during the opening day of the budget session of the Legislative assembly, this creating history as this was the first time speech was delivered in Tamil.
The budget for the year 2021-22 will be presented in the legislative assembly on August 27.
She said that the financial resources of the Union Territory are very limited after the introduction of the GST and added that the government was constrained to strike a balance between available resources and constrained expenditure.
Soundararajan also said that the people of Puducherry has reposed faith in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under the leadership of N. Rangasamy and expressed hope that the government would strive to achieve its stated objective of ensuring peace, prosperity and development of Puducherry.
The Lt Governor also called upon the elected representatives to work hard under the guidance of the Chief Minister to fulfil the expectations of the people and make the Union Territory prosperous, free from poverty and unemployment in the course of time.
She also said that the state government was making full efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic and has largely succeeded. She expressed confidence that the Union Territory of Puducherry would be free from the pandemic soon with the cooperation of the government machinery and following Covid safety rules.
She also said that Puducherry was the first state to post medical officers in all the 81 sub-centres for healthcare and transformed all the 40 primary health centres and 81 sub-centres into wellness centres.
Even as the Lt Governor was asking people to keep strict social distancing and to wear masks, several of the elected legislators were sitting close to each other and not even wearing masks. Those who were wearing masks were not doing it properly.
Senior legislators like Speaker Embalam R. Selvam and two ministers, Chandirapriyanka and J. Saravana Kumar did not wear masks at all.
Some were wearing the masks in an inappropriate way, which were dangling from their chin.
Covid-19 cases have witnessed decline in the Union Territory and this has led to complacency among the general public as well as the legislators. On Thursday, 73 cases were reported of which 45 were in Puducherry, 16 in Mahe, 8 in Karaikal and 4 in Yanam.