The case of the Russian woman – arrested after attempting to smuggle 2.5kgs of cocaine into the Maldives – has been sent to the Prosecutor General’s (PG) office.
Purtova Angelina – a 25-year-old Russian national – was arrested on January 27 this year when she arrived in the Maldives from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Deputy Prosecutor General Hussein Shameem has confirmed with Minivan News that police have finished their investigation, and that the case was forwarded to the PG last Thursday (April 3). Shameem estimated that the court hearing will take place within the next week.
“We don’t know yet what the decision will be, we will have to wait until the court hearing next week.” Shameem told Minivan.
Purtova, a makeup artist, allegedly has a history of distributing cocaine to a number of countries and has associations with a large drug trafficking network in Europe, according to Haveeru.
According to the reports, Angelina had been reported missing by her family when she arrived in the Maldives. Family members and friends had used social media networks to try and find her.
On January 26 2014, the Criminal Court ruled that Philippines national Jenerosa Pancho Mapula was guilty of smuggling 3 kgs of cocaine into the Maldives, and fining her MVR100,000 (USD 6510) and sentencing her to life imprisonment.
The Criminal Court ruling stated that, on April 24, 2013, Jenerosa arrived in the Maldives at about 8:50am and that police searched her luggage after receiving intelligence reports that she was carrying illegal narcotics.
Jenerosa denied the charges, the court said, though according to witnesses produced in court the drugs were found inside her luggage. Jenerosa was ordered to pay the fine within one month.
The Law on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances stipulates that a foreign national charged with importing over 1 gram of narcotics will be sentenced to life imprisonment. There is also a possibility of received a minimum fine of MVR10,000 (US$651).
Teachers across the Maldives have today (April 6) taken part in a ‘black protest’ – wearing black clothes to school – to raise awareness of pay discrepancies and what they see as the state’s failure to improve the education sector.
“This is the first step, we want to draw attention to these issues. For the sake of our students we will go to work until we exhaust all other ways,” said Teachers Association Maldives (TAM) president Athif Abdul Hakeem.
One teacher told Minivan News that the move has come after repeated attempts to work through official channels.
“The reason we are doing this to express our grievances. Our discontentment with salary and allowances, lack of resources and and other issues we face in teaching,” stated Mausoom Saleem of Thaajuddheen School, Malé.
Athif had previously explained to Minivan News that teachers were working overtime without being paid for it.
“Independent institutions haven’t noticed this. If they don’t do this work it could be reflected in their appraisal, and they even fear termination. So they work. But without getting paid for the work,” he said.
Teachers’ overtime allowances have been reduced to just five percent of the basic salary, which on average amounts to less than MVR300 per month. But teachers have complained that school will not run without teachers doing overtime work.
In a letter sent out to schools prior to the protest, the Ministry of Education had said that pamphlets distributed by the TAM consist of false allegations that might create conflict and unrest, it has been reported.
The ministry also stated that since school premises are “dignified”, teachers must not do anything that may have a negative effect on students, reported local media Haveeru.
“Therefore, no one must participate in an an activity encouraged in the documents distributed under the name of Teachers’ Association on April 6. Please inform the teachers working in your institutions accordingly,” the letter was said to have read.
One ministry official with whom Minivan News spoke today denied there was any protest happening, and was unwilling to provide further comment.
Show of solidarity
Saleem – who has worked as a teacher for 10 years, with 8 of those at Thaajuddheen – explained that an estimated 60% of the teachers were taking part in the black protest.
“I don’t think wearing a specific colour to school will have any impact on the students. I believe they will understand that we are doing this for them. This is not just about teachers, this is about the education system.”
Parents, too, he noted were taking part in the protest by dropping off the children today wearing black.
“I think this was a display of solidarity. We are also seeing a lot of pictures [of people wearing black] on social media, with supportive comments.”
Teachers from Thaajuddheen School take part in the 'Black Protest'
Another teacher taking part in the protest– who wishes to stay anonymous – spoke with Minivan News today. The source stated that as well as marking, there are other demanding after school and weekend functions that teachers are expected to work without getting any overtime pay.
“I have never been paid any overtime,” stated the source, who has taught in the Maldives for three and a half years. They gave the example of working the Founder’s Day celebration which took place across many schools and organisations- “we had to work the function and we didn’t have a choice. This was 8 hours work during the day on our day off, with no payment and no choice.”
“I personally don’t have adequate time to plan, I have too many lessons after they recently changed my timetable.” In a previous school, the source stated they had taught for 18 periods per week – that has recently gone up to 31.
Free periods are often time that teachers will use for planning, marking, ensuring children get to their next lessons safely, or after school activites.
“I have 11 free periods, but we also do after-school clubs, I run an extra support class where I teach children for an extra hour after the lesson.”
“I may not be teaching, but these things are not taken into consideration,” the source stated.
“So in late January (2014) we requested to arrange a meeting but there was no response. So sent another letter this month. now we are waiting to discuss our issues. our next step will depend on how that goes,” Athif said.
According to TAM the organisation has 1,500 permanent member and an estimated 4,000 Maldivian teachers across the country who will participate. Recent Civil Service Commission data shows there to be 5,676 teachers in the Maldives – 4,855 of them are locals.
The Maldives’ first ever Hackathon, organised by local not for profit Kickstart, has concluded today in Malé City Hall.
A Hackathon is an event that brings together web developers from the local community to create new software or applications. The Hackathon hopes to inspire participants to develop products that could have a high social impact, or ‘kickstart’ a viable business.
The 24 hour event – which has attracted 40 local developers – started on April 4 2014 at 4pm and concluded today at 4pm. Software developers have come together at the event to work on a variety of interesting and inspiring projects – competing with each other to win a set of prizes sponsored by numerous partners.
Starting in the mid to late 2000s, Hackathons have become significantly more widespread worldwide, being held as a means to quickly develop new software technologies, promote local software developers and to locate new areas for innovation and funding.
According to the event website, the Hackathon enables people to “give back to the community, solve a problem, change lives, and contribute to the open-source world.”
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony on Friday, one of the organisers Ahmed Riyaz ‘Dadi’ Mohamed said that there is no industry for software and application development in the Maldives, but there are very talented Maldivians at it, reported local media Haveeru.
According to the rules, participants may work on any type of project and are free to use any tools, programming languages, architecture and hardware of their choice.
Projects so far range from an app to facilitate traffic police and immigration authority work, to an app for checking hospital and clinic queue numbers and announcements
Vnews’ creative editor Mohamed Afzal is developing an app to facilitate the transport system. Afzal said that ferry schedules will be made available with the app.
“When guesthouse businesses are expanding at such a fast rate, such an app would really help the many tourists that come to the Maldives. With this app they will not have to roam around lost and aimless,” he explained to Haveeru.
Any software and systems developed at the hackathon will remain the property of the respective developer. Developers may choose to release their project as open-source software with a license of their liking, or keep their project private or may offer it for sale.
The winners of first and second and third prize will be awarded MVR15,000, MVR10,000 and MVR 5,000, respectively. The National Centre for Information Technology has decided to award two special prizes of MVR8,000 to a participant below the age of 21 and to a female developer.
Winners will be selected through peer voting after the presentations at the end of the event.
The Maldives High Commission in Bangladesh has closed its operations, with acting high commissioner Ahmed Adil reportedly citing “unprecedented fiscal problems”.
“Even the foreign ministry’s budget has been slashed by 40 percent,” he told the Bangladeshi media. “It’s a very big cut.”
Adil stated that despite the closure, the excellent bilateral relations Maldives and Bangladesh would continue, and that an alternative arrangement would be sought to bridge the absence of a mission in Dhaka.
An unnamed source from the commission also told the Dhaka Tribune that severe budgetary constraints had prompted the shutdown, suggesting that diplomatic services would continue to be provided from New Delhi.
In a comment piece produced earlier this week, former Bangladeshi High Commissioner to the Maldives Professor Selina Mohsin described the decision as a “wrong move”.
“Diplomatic continuity is a necessity and reciprocity is essential to foster good relations with a friendly Saarc state. But countries are not always ruled by rational consideration of advantages, but often by unthinking foolhardiness.
High Commissioner between 2008 and 2010, Mohsin argued that the Dhaka mission played an important role in strengthening the bond between the island nation and Bangladesh.
“Bangladesh has over 70,000 migrant workers in the Maldives – more than from India or Sri Lanka. They face dubious recruitment procedures, their passports are seized by unscrupulous brokers on arrival, and often wages are withheld,” she argued.
Minivan News was awaiting a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which failed to be published at the time of press.
A World Bank report produced late last year suggested that excessive state expenditure risked derailing the economy. Over seventy percent of the current budget is allocated for recurrent expenditure.
Similarly, the departing MMA governor urged the government to reduce expenditure. After proposing a record MVR17.95 billion budget in December last year – later passed – the MMA’s published response called for cuts that included a reduction in state apparatus to reflect the country’s size and income.
The Bangladeshi High Commission, opened in 2008, was one of the Maldives’ 13 overseas diplomatic missions. The country currently has embassies in China, Saudi Arabia, and Japan, with high commissions in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.
The country also has permanent missions representing the country in Brussels, Geneva, and New York.
Estimates of migrant workers currently in the Maldives range from 70,000 to as high as 110,000 with undocumented workers estimated to be as high as 44,000.
Employment trafficking scams and fraudulent recruitment it is nearly impossible to reach a conclusive number.
The Department of Immigration and Emigration recently revealed that, in an effort to curb the numbers of illegal workers, it is strengthening action taken against those who employ or provide housing for undocumented migrant individuals.
It was also revealed that a voluntary repatriation scheme for undocumented workers had seen 4,400 workers out of 5,134 that registered for the programme leaving the Maldives since December.
Members of the Maldives Human Rights Commission (HRCM) refused to attend a Juvenile Court meeting yesterday (April 1), after having asked the Supreme Court to rule on the legitimacy of the court’s actions.
The commission has contended that the Juvenile Court is in violation of “the legal principles and procedures followed in contempt of court cases.”
A press statement from HRCM released yesterday evening noted that the Prosecutor General’s Office had not charged the commission with contempt of court because only the Supreme Court could initiate such cases of its own accord.
Deputy Prosecutor General Hussain Shameem has told Haveeru that the court does not have the authority to summon HRCM members over contempt of court charges.
The court has been requesting the meetings in order to question HRCM members about a confidential report concerning the sentencing of a 15 year old rape victim to flogging and house arrest in 2012.
”We are trying to summon the HRCM members regarding a report they sent to the Juvenile Court on 5 December 2013, in which the HRCM has included false information about the Juvenile Court and it also contained things that could be considered as an attempt to influence the court’s work,” Juvenile Court Spokesperson Zaima Nasheed told Minivan News today.
Zaima has argued previously that the constitution states no public officials can “interfere with and influence the functions of the courts”, instead they must “assist and protect the courts to ensure the independence, eminence, dignity, impartiality, accessibility and effectiveness of the courts.”
The HRCM press release added that the report referred to in the media was a confidential document, which had only been shared with relevant authorities or state institutions.
“We assure that the report does not include any false statements that hold the Juvenile Court in contempt,” the press release stated.
Previous meetings
After refusing to attend the meeting yesterday, the Juvenile Court sent an official court summons for today (April 2) to each individual commission member, according to local media.
Following the official court summons, the HRCM members appeared before the court this morning at 10am and were told to respond in writing before 3pm.
The HRCM was first summoned to the Juvenile Court on March 12, with a further request to meet made on March 17 after members failed to accede to the previous requests – all five members of the HRCM subsequently attended on March 17.
The HRCM is reported to have agreed to cooperate at this meeting, on the condition that it was given a period of ten days after the parliamentary elections scheduled for March 22 before the first questioning session.
The 15-year-old rape victim from the island of Feydhoo in Shaviyani Atoll was convicted of premarital sex at the Juvenile Court and sentenced to 100 lashes and eight months of house arrest.
In June 2012, the girl gave birth to a baby that was discovered buried in the outdoor shower area of her home. Her stepfather was later charged with child sexual abuse, possession of pornographic materials and committing premeditated murder.
An official from the Prosecutor General’s Office told Minivan News in January last year that the fornication charges against the minor were related to a separate offence of premarital sex that emerged during the police investigation. The charges were filed on November 25, 2012.
In its verdict, the Juvenile Court ordered the state to transfer the girl to the Children’s Home in Villingili to enforce the sentence of eight months house arrest, according to local media reports.
ARC also previously called for reforms of the juvenile justice system and reform of the current protection mechanisms provided to minors who are kept in state run institutions, such as homes and foster programs.
Collecting turtle eggs is still legal and will remain so until at least 2015, according to government regulations, despite recent scientific reports stating that the population of the majority of turtle species is declining.
“We have a moratorium that will end at 2015, then we will look at other measures that we have to take,” explained Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture Dr Mohamed Shainee.
With turtle population numbers declining and some species at serious risk of complete extinction, organisations are working hard to protect turtles from further degradation at the hand of both humans and the environment.
The biggest threat to turtles, according to Sam Hope – Marine Discovery Centre Manager at Four Seasons Kuda Huraa – is egg collection and trade.
“There is a ban on catching and killing turtles in the Maldives, and that has been in places since June 1995, however, there isn’t a ban on egg collection,” stated Hope.
According to the fisheries regulations, the” catching, fishing, collecting or killing” of sea turtles is illegal across the entire country. The collection of sea turtles and eggs is also illegal say the regulations, but this is only applicable to 14 islands out of a possible 1,192.
The continuing secret slaughter of turtles was demonstrated last year after photographic evidence the practice emerged, showing dozens of dead sea turtles loaded onto a dhoni.
More recently, an article by Dr Agnese Mancini – an expert on turtle conservation – reported a decline in the population of the majority of turtle species found in the Maldives.
Published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the report established that while quantitative data on turtle numbers is scattered, the data collected recently from the entire Indian Ocean indicates negative trends in population numbers for all of the species, barring the Olive Ridley species.
Despite these findings, the laws governing the collection of turtle eggs remains the same and will do until at least 2015, stated Dr Shainee.
“Before that we will start planning for the next steps, and increasing our understanding – we will try and get stakeholders on board,” he said.
When asked if he thought the ban on egg collection should cover all islands of the Maldives, Shainee said that all islands would be protected, but that efforts needed to be focused.
“The rest of the islands we will do, but if they are not nesting islands there’s no point in unnecessarily restricting. For those areas that we know, we want to protect.”
In response to some of these threats, Four Seasons has teamed up with local environmental agency Seamarc to implement a number of valuable conservation programmes across the Maldives – based from their two on-site Marine Discovery Centres.
Among the pair’s successful projects is the ‘Head Start’ programme run from the Kuda Huraa resort – a fledgling project which has shown great potential to help increase the local turtle population.
The likelihood of turtle hatchlings surviving is estimated to be around 150:1, and so marine biologists have been hand-rearing a select few young turtles at the Marine Conservation Centre in order to give them a greater chance of survival.
“Where we do get a hatchling nest, we allow all of them to run down to the sea – because that’s very important for their development – but when they reach the sea we collect just two for our Head Start programme,” explained Hope.
Marine Biologists at the Marine Discovery Centre, Four Seasons
“The Head Start programme is aiming to provide a safe environment so those turtles can go through the early stages of development and avoid those early stages of danger.”
“Because turtles have got a pretty rough deal- anything from ants to rats, cats, seabirds, fish and sharks- its really tough when you’re only 4-5 inches long with no defence techniques at all -apart from looking incredibly cute.”
“So we bring them back here, place them into our pools where we do a weekly check up where we weigh and measure them. The weight is very important to their health, and we’re working hard to understand the sea turtle dietary requirements,” Hope continued.
“When the Head Start gets to 18cm – which takes about 13 months – we put a satellite tracker on their back and we send them out into the big blue. We download from the satellite every two days, and download the data into google maps.”
The tags are semi-permanent, meaning the researchers can see how far the turtles have travelled for up to 10 months.
To date, the Head Start programme has reared and released 37 turtles, with 16 tagged for satellite tracking.
There are a number of resorts which are contributing valuable work to environmental conservation, but in order to push this movement to the next level, Hope notes that the links between resorts and local communities need to be stronger.
“There needs to be more trust between resorts and local communities” he states. “What would really benefit the movement is a bottom up management, led by a greater amount of community work and community led projects.”
Regarding the laws against turtle egg collection, Hope said that it was unlikely all islands are being used for turtle nesting, but admitted there was a dearth of local knowledge which Seamarc was attempting to address with local surveys and community assessments.
“Turtles sometimes switch nesting beaches if the beach condition becomes degraded which means that they may start using unprotected islands in the future if they are not already. Before we can decide on scientific policy we require scientific fact on which we can base decisions.”
“It is our hope that our work will shed more light on the extent of turtle nesting activities in order to further protect these endangered species.”
Last night (March 29), the Maldives took part in celebrating the international event, Earth Hour. In the press statement prior to the event, the Ministry of Environment and Energy confirmed that the activities planned around Earth Hour Maldives 2014 were to be “mainly focused on children and youths.”
As the next generation is invited to take responsibility for climate change, some still wonder if the young people of the Maldives are being equipped to tackle one of the biggest threats to the archipelago.
“There needs to be a lot more dialogue on climate change,” argues Ahmed Shaam from NGO Dhi Youth Movement, who helped organise a youth-led flash mob to promote Earth Hour Maldives. “Apathy comes from lack of understanding.”
According to its statement, Earth Hour’s mission is three-fold: to bring people together through a symbolic hour-long event, to galvanise people into taking action beyond the hour, and to create an interconnected global community sharing the mutual goal of creating a sustainable future for the planet.
From 8:30pm to 9:30pm local time on the last Saturday of March every year, Earth Hour is celebrated in all countries by encouraging people to turn off all the lights and electrical appliances in a “massive show of concern for the environment”, according to the event’s website.
Earth Hour 2014 in the Maldives was a joint venture by the Scout Association of Maldives, with support from the Ministry of Environment and the State Electric Company Limited (STELCO).
The activities included an impressive firework display followed by bands and DJs performing on the main stage – equipped with stage lighting and PA system. Organisers confirmed that they were expecting around 470 attendees, but estimate that the number was much higher than that.
However, while young people attended in their hundreds, the question remains as to whether people really engaged with the subject at the heart of the campaign – or were the bright lights of the stage the main attraction?
“I think people who work on Earth Hour have really good intentions and did a really good job,” said Project Co-ordinator for Dhi Youth Movement Shaam. He added, however, “I think Maldivians are not in the right place to take initiative on their own, the government needs to do a lot more work in terms of creating awareness.”
Youth-led action
Dhi Youth Movement is one of the Maldives most popular youth led NGOs, but also the newest – having only been officially established in 2012. In spite of this, the “new kids on the block” have an impressive resumé of events, including the Kittu Hivaaru Festival – a platform for aspiring young artists and musicians to showcase their talents.
Priding themselves on thinking outside the box, Dhi Youth Movement organised an alternative to the official Earth Hour activities, with an estimated 60-70 young people attending the Dhi Youth Earth Hour campaign called ‘Simon Says’ – an interactive ‘flash mob’ which took over the streets of Malé last night.
The pioneering event invited attendees to download a track from the internet via social media, and directed them to a central meeting point. Once there, participants play the audio track from their mobile phone at exactly 8pm. The activities are based on a mixture of fun, and environmental conscience – with one instruction being to go into a shop which has not turned off the lights for Earth Hour, and slow-dance with a mannequin. On leaving the shop, young people would inform the perplexed owners about Earth Hour, and some of the issues behind the project.
Speaking about why their event was a welcome supplement to the official activities, Dhi Youth’s Shaam explained that “people sometimes forget the actual reason why they are doing it, and there needs to be more emphasis on why we are doing it. In our event we make sure there is an environmental component to it.”
“I think there still needs to be a lot more of a dialogue when it comes to climate changes– people in the islands don’t see how climate change can affect us.”
Political Change vs Climate Change
Under the presidency of Mohamed Nasheed, the Maldives had pledged to become carbon neutral by 2020.
As one of the lowest-lying countries in the world, with an average elevation of 1.5 meters above sea level, the country is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as sea level rise.
Nasheed sought to highlight the need for the Maldives to be a key model for other countries seeking to become more sustainable, and that an inability to meet the unilateral commitments would prove detrimental to wider arguments around the globe for adopting law carbon initiatives.
The government of Nasheed’s successor Dr Mohamed Waheed also said that it was committed to “not completely“ reversing the Nasheed administration’s zero carbon strategy: “What we are aiming to do is to elaborate more on individual sustainable issues and subject them to national debate,” said Waheed.
Speaking to Minivan News in October 2012, the government assured that they were adhering to their commitment to become carbon neutral by 2020 in spite of political uncertainty.
More recently in the news, the International Renewable Energy Investor’s conference, focusing on the development of solar energy in the Maldives, took place on March 26 at Bandos resort.
The one-day conference – organised by the Ministry of Environment and Energy with the World Bank – aimed to transform the Maldives’ energy sector by reducing the dependency on costly fossil fuels for power generation.
Meanwhile, further confirmation has come in recent weeks from President Abdulla Yameen that that the government will commence work on locating crude oil in the Maldives.
According to local media, Yameen had said that if the government is indeed successful in finding oil in the Maldives, the outlook for the entire country would change for the better.
“The previous government [Maldivian Democratic Party] had a lot of emphasis on environment and climate change, they tried a lot of advocacy and awareness, but I think the current government needs to do a lot more to create awareness,” said Shaam.
“They don’t understand why they need to do this. Apathy comes form lack of understanding – if the people involved can pass on information to the public there will be less apathy.”
The International Renewable Energy Investor’s conference, focusing on the development of solar energy in the Maldives, took place yesterday (March 26) at Bandos resort.
The one-day conference – organised by the Ministry of Environment and Energy with the World Bank – aimed to transform the Maldives’ energy sector by reducing the dependency on costly fossil fuels for power generation.
The ministry reported that a total of 78 participants from government organisations, the World Bank, foreign consultants and investors discussed photovoltaic (PV) systems which could be established in Malé and Hulhumalé, as well as a framework for subsidies.
Published March 21 2014, this report details some of the difficulties faced by the Maldives, as well as future plans to increase the proportion of sustainable energy consumed in the country.
Submitted by the government and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, the proposal asks for a US$10,683 million grant in funding from the ‘Scaling Up Renewable Energy Programme’.
“The Government has no current stabilization program with the International Monetary Fund. The prior program lapsed in 2009 and most of the measures were reversed. The World Bank started a Development Policy Credit in 2010 for economic stabilization and recovery that was also cancelled due to lack of progress,” states the ASPIRE proposal.
“A major concern of foreign investors in Maldives has been their inability to reliably and consistently convert local currency to hard currency for reasonable transaction costs at the official exchange rate for repatriation of shareholder returns and foreign currency debt service.”
“The country has no conventional resources of energy. Providing electricity to the dispersed islands is overwhelmingly dependent on imported diesel fuel oil, and therefore vulnerable to fuel price volatility.”
Diesel fuel accounts for the bulk of the energy supply in the country, about 82.5% in 2009, according to ASPIRE. Therefore, the report suggests a move toward renewable energy as a means of improving “economic difficulties”.
“The development of solar PV projects is expected to improve the country’s fiscal situation by reducing both the volume of fossil fuel imports, as well as the fiscal uncertainty arising from fuel price volatility. This would also replace the expensive diesel based generation and result in significant reduction of the government subsidy,” the report confirms.
Similar reforms to the energy sector chimes were set to be rolled out two years ago, before the unstable political situation led to its premature demise.
On the afternoon of February 7, 2012, the Maldives was set to sign in a revolutionary plan to attract an estimated US$200 million of risk-mitigated renewable energy investment.
The Scaling-Up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) proposal was produced by the Renewable Energy Investment Office under President Mohamed Nasheed’s administration.
The World Bank team working on the project had given verbal approval for the plan, reportedly describing it as one of the most “exciting and transformative” projects of its kind in any country.
Previous awards for Clean Energy in the Maldives
Abu Dhabi media reported that in January 2014 The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) pledged Dh22million (US$6 million) in concessionary loans for clean energy projects in the Maldives.
The announcement came as Abu Dhabi hosted the Fourth Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) – attended by a delegation from the Maldives.
“Maldives does not have the luxury of time to sit and wait for the rest of the world to act and that Maldives has started the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” Maldivian Minister for Environment and Energy Thoriq Ibrahim told the assembly.
The project will benefit 120,000 people, with a reduced need for landfills, the generation of 2MW of clean energy, and the production of 62 million litres of desalinated water per year.
Shortly after this award, the Maldives carried out a pioneering desalination project on the island of Gulhi, in Kaafu atoll, which became the first place in the world to produce desalinated drinking water using waste heat from electricity generation.
While these projects indicate advances toward renewable energy, the government has also pledged to seek crude oil as an alternative means of diversifying the economy and supplementing fuel supply.
According to local news outlet CNM, during a speech made by President Abdulla Yameen on March 16 he pledged to begin the search for crude oil. He went on to say that if the government is indeed successful in finding oil in the Maldives, the outlook for the entire country would change for the better.
However, Local NGO Bluepeace raised concerns regarding this pledge. Ali Rilwan Executive Director noted that with the large income from tourism and the spread of guest houses in local isands, the oil drilling “won’t have benefits for the people as a whole.”
“We can’t afford to go into that dirty energy,” he concluded. “When you take up the issues of drilling, we are concerned about the oil container tanks with unrefined fuel passing through.”
Minivan News was unable to contact State Ministers from the Ministry of Environment and Energy for further comment at the time of publishing.
Vilu Reef resort has allegedly terminated 18 members of staff, with some given just one hour to leave, after employees had presented management with a list of grievances.
Speaking with Minivan News, Ahmed Rasheed – a Vilu Reef employee for two years before his dismissal yesterday – described his termination:
“They sent me with 5 police guards into my room. They locked the door and asked me to pack within one hour.”
Vilu Reef is part of the Sun Travel & Tours group – a company owned by the prominent businessman and Maldives Development Alliance (MDA) leader Ahmed ‘Sun’ Shiyam.
After compiling a list of grievances against the resort, Rasheed explained that he had prepared a petition on which he managed to get 153 signatures from fellow staff.
He recalled that the demands were then presented to the hotel management on March 17, who came back to the employees, suggesting “if you don’t want to stay here you can leave.”
After conferring with the staff team, employees then decided to strike, stated Rasheed, with around 50 resort employees congregating at around 11pm with their demands on Sunday (March 23).
The management called police, but assured staff that no would be terminated, said Rasheed. They agreed to carry out amendments to meet the requests as of the April 30, he added, “so the next day we went back to work.”
“I was fired after two days,” continued Rasheed. “They just give me a call and said ‘hey can you come to the office’, then they gave me a letter. They asked me to sign.”
According to Rasheed’s termination contract, the reason Vilu Reef fired him was because his post was no longer available.
The termination letter stated that the employees were being fired due to their posts “being made redundant” and were asked to leave with “immediate effective (sic) of March 25”.
The letter acknowledges that there should be one month’s notice for the termination of staff, and therefore the management “have decided to as an extra measure compensation payment in lieu of three months notice period.”
The next steps, according to Rasheed, are being supported by the Tourism Association of Maldives (TEAM).
“We are not a member of TEAM but we are really thanking them for their help. They are helping us to do something good. At least we have some people who are trying to get our rights back.”
Workers’ right to strike
TEAM Secretary General Mauroof Zakir told Minivan News that TEAM would assist the staff in taking the case to the Employment Tribunal, though felt there would be “no hope” for a fair case.
“Shiyam is very strong here,” he noted, “one of the partners of the government.”
“Since 2012 the decisions are against international standards and international best practice,” he added. “It’s all corrupt judiciary, and high court decisions against employment cases are one of the key factors.”
According to the Freedom of Peaceful Assembly Act 2013, tourist resorts, ports, and airports fall into a category of places in which protests are prohibited.
The US State Department expressed concern about the change in this law in their recently released 2013 Human Rights Report.
Local NGOs Transparency Maldives and the Maldivian Democracy Network have also expressed their concern that the law has impacted upon freedom of peaceful assembly.
No-one from the management team at Vilu Reef was available for comment when contacted by Minivan News.
Earlier this year the prestigious One & Only Reethi Rah resort saw an estimated 90% of its employees partake in an organised strike against perceived ill treatment and discrimination.
The strike was called following the management’s failure to meet employees to discuss concerns regarding discrimination against local workers, and a team of police were dispatched to the resort.
In a similar case in September 2013, staff at Irufushi Beach and Spa resort reported a “firing spree” affecting staff members professing to support the Maldivian Democratic Party.
The resort, which in May 2013 abruptlyterminated its agreement with hotel giant Hilton – leading to the overnight resignation of 30 employees – is also part of the Sun Travel group.
A source working at the hotel at the time of publishing stated, “Shiyam took over this resort in what the staff refers to as another coup d’etat at the resort level. Since then we have been gradually stripped of rights we are legally entitled to as citizens of the Maldives.”
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