Category: Business & Tourism

Maldives business news

BML to block foreign account holders from using debit cards overseas

Expatriates holding local accounts with the Bank of Maldives (BML) will be prevented from spending money overseas using their debit cards, as the dollar shortage worsens.

A statement from the BML, written in Dhivehi, stated that from November 1 foreigners with debit cards will be unable to conduct transactions of any amount from either the ATMs of other banks or point-of-sale machines in shops.

At the same time, the overseas spending limit for Maldivians has risen from US$200 a day to US$600.

The move, blamed by BML on the worsening dollar crisis, will particularly impact the many foreign teachers and other professionals such as doctors working in the country who bank locally, particularly those based outside Male’ who need to send money home.

One such doctor explains on his personal blog that it is common practice for foreign doctors to transfer money home by opening a BML account at a branch in the atoll capital, and then give an international visa debit card to relatives in his/her home country.

“Now no one has any idea about how to send money to their country without visiting Male’,” he writes. “If you keep the money with you, there is no guarantee that you will not be robbed of it.”

“The gynecologist of our hospital was robbed after he got his salary three months back. The next day, someone opened the house with a [spare] key and cut open the suitcase where he kept his money.”

In August an Indian pediatrician working at Kudahuvadhoo Hospital in Dhaal Atoll was stabbed in his home by a group of masked men.

The attack occurred on 10 minutes after the doctor arrived home from the hospital, when the group forced in his door. The doctor was stabbed in the arm and leg when he was unable to give the men any money.

Moreover, after October 15, BML will only allow foreigners to transact overseas from a US dollar account.

“Debit card for rufiya accounts can only be issued to foreigners for ‘local’ use at the the Bank of Maldives ATMs and POS terminals,” the announcement reads.

Several foreign commodity importers based in the Maldives also warned that their businesses were under threat after local banks began refusing to trade freely in rufiya.

“Our overseas suppliers have to be paid in dollars, and local buyers pay us in rufiya. Our bank has now stopped allowing us to transfer this into our US dollar account,” the manager of one enterprise told Minivan News recently. “How are you meant to run a business in this place? Surely they can’t go on like this?”

Press Secretary for the President Mohamed Zuhair told Minivan News that the end of the off-peak tourist season had combined with “a concurrence of other factors” to exacerbate the foreign currency crisis.

“There are currently two groups of people who need dollars – the first is the group of pilgrims about to go on the Hajj – the whole exercise usually costs US$30 million. Unfortunately it’s also the school holidays, and many teachers going on holiday will also need the money. That’s why there’s going to be shortages,” he said.

He acknowledged that the dollar situation was affecting investor confidence and making the Maldives a less appealing destination in which to conduct business.

“Foreigners can bank with foreign banks such as the State Bank of India,” he noted. “We also have a commitment from [Indian infrastructure giant] GMR that they will pay their first down payment on Male’ International Airport by the end of November – it was initially the end of December. Income from the donor conference should also reach US$90 million by the end of the year,” he said.

“It’s just unfortunate that the Hajj is slightly ahead of these debts. [Investor] confidence is a big problem, and the government is talking to the Maldives Monetary Authority. But there are no quick fixes.”

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Games could mean serious business for the Maldives, says MESA

A team of young Maldivans from the Maldives E-Sport Association (MESA) returned home last week fresh from competing at the Sri Lankan Cyber Games (SLCG), facing off against the tournament winners in their first exhibition match outside the country.

‘E-Sports’ – competitive multi-player computer gaming – are extremely popular in the Maldives. MESA holds its own gaming festival every year (the next is at the end of November) and attracts sponsorship from companies such as Dhiraagu, Point IT, Coca-Cola and Raajje Online, rivaling a major sporting event.

The Maldivian side is getting noticed on the international pro-gaming circuit too, explains MESA’s President Ismail ‘Levitan’ Azmee, for despite their relative lack of experience, the team drew their exhibition match with the Sri Lankan champions at the SLCG.

The game was ‘Call of Duty 4’, a first person shooter (FPS) in which two teams of players must coordinate to achieve a set objective, such as capturing a flag, or more usually, exterminating the opposition with virtual gunfire. A player is reincarnated at the beginning of each round.

Matches at the SCLG were a race to 13 win, Azmee explains.

“The first match we lost 9-13. But in the next match we got to chose our [preferred] map, and we won 13-11,” he says. “If you know the map, you have an advantage over your opponent because you know how to flank them.”

The Sri Lankan teams were very experienced having played together for three years, while the Maldivian side: Ali Ayham, Mohamed Maaiyz Nasheed, Mohamed Samhan, Mohamed Bassam, Ikram Easa, Mohamed Jinad, Mohamed Iyash and Ali Farooq had only eight months.

Teams play opposite each other at a bank of computers, communicating using in-game commands to avoid tipping off the opposition.

Sportsmanship was tested during the match, when, outnumbered by jeering spectators, one of the Maldivian side was ‘knifed’ in-game by a Sri Lankan player.

With all the high-powered weaponry in the game, the close-combat killing of an unobservant player is considered the ultimate humiliation.

“But we kept our cool, and knifed him back twice,” says Ali Ayham, one of MESA’s exhibition players. “They became quite agitated after that.”

Other games played included racing simulation Need for Speed.

“The Maldives is strongest in Counterstrike and Call of Duty, but we also have possibly one of the best Guitar Hero players in the region,” says Azmee. “He doesn’t miss a button.”

Far from the inconsequential past-time of idle and dissolute youth, MESA is one of the Maldives’ largest, youngest and most active associations. Were its 10,000 to 12,000 members to form a political party, it would come close to being the third largest in the Maldives, after the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and the opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP).

Accordingly, MESA wants nothing more than to trigger a surge in high-tech investment to the Maldives.

“Maldivian industry is limited to tourism and fishing,” Azmee says, “and we want to introduce electronics in the near future. The country has a high youth population, and one of the biggest forms of entertainment in the country is electronic. Most gamers are not out to compete at a professional level, they just play for fun, but for those that want to take it to the next level, MESA is trying to make that happen.”

Gaming, he says, “is not just entertainment – it’s an industry. Game testers are paid more than doctors in the Maldives – you have to be an extreme gamer and really know your gaming history. It’s a demanding job.”

MESA has already built connections with companies in South Korea, where computer gaming is the de facto national sport. “They have committed to supporting us to develop the electronics industry in the country,” Azmee notes, adding that the association has letters from the government supporting the creation of an “electronics village”, in a location such as like Hulhumale.

“We particularly want to attract game developers,” Azmee explains. “There are already a few mobile game developers here who have submitted proposals to [famous developers] Electronic Arts and Square Enix, but there are currently few opportunities for professional developers in the country because of a lack of support for the industry.

“There are a lot of people here with the required degrees, but no opportunity to develop what they have been trained to do. They have to accept jobs with low wages doing things they are not trained for. We have asked companies to come and develop here – we’ve already talked with them, we have all the documents and support from the government, even from the President himself.”

Internet access speeds in the Maldives are not up to the level of competitive gaming however, Azmee says, which has forced MESA to decline some offers to compete online.

“We don’t have the net connection here to play online competitively, although we have really good PCs. We are working with both the telecoms companies to try and get better pings (speeds).”

However corporate support for sponsoring gaming within the Maldives is already strong, Azmee says.

“At the SLCG in Sri Lanka we observed that while they had 200 teams, they had far less support than we have in the Maldives – they’ve asked for our assistance to get it. We are shortly going to start the first ever South Asia E-Sport Association here in the Maldives, and in the near future we’ll be signing MoUs with Pakistan, Singapore, India and Vietnam.”

Locally, MESA runs a gaming centre in Male’ on the main road of Majeedhee Magu, decorated with painted characters from the popular FPS Counterstrike. Many more players from the islands play online, and the association’s local servers attract many German, Brazilian, Korean and Singaporean players as well.

Prior to MESA’s arrival the centre had a reputation for being somewhere where local drug addicts would come to buy drugs, shoot up and hang out, says Azmee, and some still drift to the centre.

Astoundingly, MESA has had significant success in rehabilitating addicts by getting them involved in gaming. Users become so absorbed in the expansive, online multi-player game worlds such as World of Warcraft (WoW) that they “forget” one addiction, trading it for another far less harmful.

“It works, and the government has acknowledged it,” Azmee says. “They tried with the youth centres to get them playing sports but it did not work. A lot of the addicts in Male’ are just people with nothing else to do, and for them gaming can truly be a life-changing thing.”

Far from a solitary pursuit, so-called ‘massively multi-player’ games such as WoW require groups of players from around the world to cooperate and work together to achieve common goals within the game, such as slaying difficult adversaries. The action-reward nature of such games and the social interaction has proven so addictive for many players that WoW is sometimes disparagingly referred to as ‘World of WarCrack’.

But its dealer, Blizzard Entertainment, has out-performed any drug mafia. WoW boasts more than 11 million paying players, and revenues in excess of US$1 billion per year.

For MESA’s competitive wing, games are serious business. Top players must practice up to eight hours a day “if we want to be the best at what we do, just to stay ahead of the competition,” Azmee explains.

It’s not all in-game practice either – the teams watch and analyse replays, and study the performance and tactics of world-ranked teams such Dignitas.

But despite the in-game challenges, the greatest obstacle comes in the form of convincing their skeptical parents that time spent gaming can lead to a viable career.

“A lot of parents are concerned, and say we are wasting our time and that playing games changes you sociologically. We’ve consulted several universities on this and found studies that show that gaming engages the mind, reflexes and problem solving abilities,” Azmee says.

“I try to explain to parents and educate them that games are not bad if played in the right way – and obviously you should not let a young child play a game like Grand Theft Auto. We are planning to introduce a ratings system to help parents learn more about the games their children are playing.”

While convincing the parents is a series of battles, MESA’s elite players appear to be winning the war.

“At first they gave us a lot of trouble by saying it was better for us to focus on studying and that there was no future in gaming,’ Azmee says. “But that changed when they saw all the medals at the last Maldives gaming festival. Now they are really helpful.”

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Q&A: Mike Mason, founder of Climate Care

Some of the world’s leading environmentalists, energy experts and economists gathered under a thatched roof, barefoot and in shorts for a conference with a difference.

The ‘Eco-Symposium’ took place over the weekend in Soneva Fushi, a luxury resort renown for its green credentials and the first in the Maldives that has pledged to go carbon neutral – by the end of this year.

Set in Baa Atoll, the 100 hectare resort grows most of its own food organically on the island, has banned any use of plastic, and provides guests with drinking water in re-usable glass bottles, produced in the island’s own bottling plant. Guests pay an additional two percent on their bills to help offset their carbon emissions.

The symposium’s stated aim was  to reconcile luxury tourism with environmental sustainability. Soneva Fushi’s owner, Sonu Shivdasani, a long time environmental entrepreneur, says: “We want to present practical solutions that make both business and environmental sense. The tourism industry must realize that reconciling its business with carbon neutrality is a matter of commercial as well as planetary survival.”

Speakers at the Symposium included Jonathan Porrit, Founder and Director of Forum for the Future, Professor Geoffrey Lipman of Unite Nations World Tourism Organisation, Eric Scotto CEO Akuo Energy Group, Jeremy Legget, Founder & Chairman Solarcentury and Mark Lynus, the government’s Climate Change Advisor.

They spoke on issues including surviving climate change and profitable climate solutions, the living building challenge and improving the transportation footprint. Special guest President Mohamed Nasheed spoke on the plans to make Maldives carbon neutral by 2020.

Minivan News spoke to Mike Mason on the sidelines of the eco symposium, following his presentation on ‘Carbon neutral Maldives: foresight or folly’.

Mason is considered a world expert in environmental economics and renewable energy technologies. He is the founder of Climate Care, a voluntary carbon offset company based in UK, which he recently sold to investment bank JP Morgan. For the past six months he has been supervising an Oxford student’s Masters thesis on energy consumption in the islands of Baa Eydhafushi and Baa Maalhos.

Aishath Shazra: When you discuss going carbon neutral with Maldivians from all walks of life, you have said the most you get from them is “that’s interesting”, or “it’s a policy that will come and go.” In lieu of this, how can you change mindsets?

Mike Mason: Nobody wakes up thinking “I want to destroy the planet today.” But a lack of knowledge about low carbon technologies, and in poor countries in particular, a lack of capital, means people find it difficult to switch to renewable technologies. A poor person can’t afford to invest in something [such as solar panels] unless is gives an immediate financial return.

A two part strategy is needed to tackle this. One is by providing the best technical advice to those in power: the government, ministers,island chiefs and so on. And secondly, providing things to win hearts and minds of people, so that local people demand change.

AS: What have you learned from the data collected from Maalhos in Baa Atoll, and what does it suggest in terms of harnessing wind and solar energy?

MM: In the study of Maalhos we learned that we absolutely can make the transition to renewable energy without increasing people’s energy bills. Moreover, we can make people’s lives better in the process, by improving their fridges and cooling their houses.

We have to integrate energy and tax policies. For example, a typical fridge in the Maldives uses 10 times as much electricity as the very best fridges currently available in Europe. This costs the household money, wastes government money in electricity subsidies and damages the environment. The irony of the fridges example is that the cost to the government of changing someone’s fridge is less than the cost of subsidising the electricity the old fridge wastes.

The second thing we learned from Maalhos concerns the choices you need to make in order to provide cheap renewable energy. For example, if you only want 30 percent of your electricity to be renewable, you can do it mainly with wind, rather than solar. But if you aim to power an island with 90 percent renewable energy, you need to use all solar and very little wind.

We have to understand these issues, and work out what targets we want to hit, before we spend a lot of money on equipment.

Participants at the Eco-Symposium, including Mike Mason and President Mohamed Nasheed

AS: Will the scattered islands of Maldives make it a challenge to use renewable energy or can we have a one-size-fits-all solution for the islands?

MM: The scattered islands of the Maldives are not a problem in going for renewables. Renewable energy is naturally distributed and there are so few advantages to connecting isolated islands. Each island can generate its own renewable energy.

However, there are exceptions, such as where islands are densely populated, and there is no room to put up all the energy harvesting equipment that is needed, such as solar panels. In these cases we have to go for an off-island solution and possibly an electricity grid [connecting islands to one another].

Male’, for instance, should have a grid linking Thilafushi, Vilingilli, Male’ and Hulhumale’. There may be other areas in the Maldives where an electricity grid is advisable.

AS: There is no income tax in the Maldives; the government imposes import duty on goods. You have said that this could prove to be our greatest national asset on our road to carbon neutrality, how is that?

MM: Everyone in the world who is an expert in this area says one has to tax the ‘bad’ and not the ‘goods’. The Maldives has an interesting tax regime that can be used to steer people towards buying better equipment, by varying import duties depending on whether an appliance is energy efficient or not.

AS: You have said that the Maldives’ most immediate danger is not climate change but our acute vulnerability to oil price shocks. Can you explain that?

MM: In the next 10 years, the world economy is likely to grow by the same amount as it did in every year until 2010. China, India, Indonesia… these countries are experiencing tremendous growth. Economic growth is always accompanied by oil demand and oil prices have risen 10 times over the last 40 years. We have now discovered most of earth’s oil, and we are unlikely to discover new oil as fast as new demands grow. When demand exceeds supply, prices rocket. What happened two years ago [when oil prices reached US$150 per barrel], was a warning for what could happen in the future.

AS: What are the benefits for ordinary people in a country going carbon neutral?

MM: Shifting to renewable energy means you are no longer exposed to the risk of oil price shocks. It means the Maldives no longer has to worry about going bankrupt because of oil price spikes. This is as much a benefit for the government as it is for the people. Put environmental considerations aside; the Maldives should go carbon neutral for economic and energy security reasons.

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New copyright law will hurt small businesses, claim MPs

New copyrights legislation passed on Wednesday could potentially be harmful for small businesses in the country, MPs from both sides of the aisle cautioned at yesterday’s sitting of parliament.

Opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Dr Abdulla Mausoom argued that the new laws would pose challenges for small business who rely on “fake products”.

“The government should conduct broad awareness programmes to circulate information on the new law, it would be a huge loss for the small businessman,” he said. “But the bill is more like a prevention bill than a bill dedicated for punishments.”

Once ratified, anyone found guilty of violating the Copy Right Act could be fined between Rf50,000-Rf300,000 (US$3800-US$23,400) or sentenced for six months imprisonment or banishment.

“My greatest concern is that people might suffer the penalties without knowing about the Copy Right Act. Not being informed is not an excuse before the law,” Dr Mausoom said.

It was essential for the government to establish a culture of respecting the rule of law within the government, he added.

Speaking at the 47th session of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in September 2009, former Economic Development Minister Mohamed Rasheed announced that the Maldives intended to be in full compliance with international intellectual property (IP) obligations by December 2010.

At yesterday’s sitting, Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Mohamed Shifaz agreed with opposition MPs that the law could create complications for small businesses.

“Small businesses rely on the market of trading copied properties, either it is T-shirts, videos or songs,” Shifaz said. “After this law is enforced the trade of fake logo products would be prohibited.”

Shifaz said that the government intended to provide assistance for small businesses to adjust to the new legal framework.

“I personally think the amount of the fine is way too high, however, that is passed now, and now we are trying to figure out a solution,” he said. “It is also questionable whether the new Act can actually be enforced.”

However, Dr Mausoom argued that the Act could be enforced if owners of intellectual property seek protection under the new laws.

“It is their product and they should start taking legal action for losses and then there is the role of the government as well,” he said.

A number of small businesses in the Maldives rely heavily on the trade of pirated products, notably in the music and movie industries.

Pirated copies of video games and computer software are highly popular among Maldivian customers – even the cash-strapped government has been observed to regularly use illegitimate software.

However the lack of copyright legislation has led to reluctance among foreign investors to invest in a market with no legal protections.

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The sunny side of life

Adopting proven sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar will reduce both the price of electricity in the Maldives and cut down on price fluctuations caused by the expensive importation of fossil fuels, claims Danny Kennedy.

He would know. The former Greenpeace campaigner turned solar power entrepreneur is riding a surge of interest in the renewable technology, spurred by economic rather than environmental imperatives.

“The solar industry grew 40 percent during the recession,” he tells Minivan News.

“The average price in the US is now US$0.24 a kilowatt, which makes solar power already a third cheaper than grid electricity in the Maldives.”

The Australian environmental campaigner ran Greenpeace campaigns across the Pacific in places such as Papa New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Fiji, prior to moving to the United States and founding Sungevity, the residential solar company that is now the third largest such provider in the country after just a few years in operation.

Kennedy is in town to oversee the pro-bono installation of 48 photovoltaic (PV) modules on the roof of Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s house, ‘Muleaage’, which convert solar radiation into direct current electricity using photovoltaic semiconductors.

Nasheed has already agreed to personally help install the units, which Kennedy expects will save the country US$300,000 in electricity over the 25-year warrantied lifespan of the units.

Sungevity calculated the solar production potential of Nasheed’s roof from its office in Oakland California, using aerial images from Microsoft’s mapping software.

The method uses a fiendishly clever piece of trigonometry developed by a young student from Sydney Grammar School in Australia, that takes the altitude of the photographing plane from the image’s metadata then uses trigonometry to calculate the angle and direction of the potential customer’s roof, and then plugs in known quantities such as the area’s solar potential and price of electricity.

The result is that customers can determine the amount of electricity the unit will generate and potential savings, over the internet, “with plus or minus one percent margin of error. That’s better than sending a kid onto the roof with a tape measure, which introduces human error.”

The schoolboy’s innovation stunned the Redmond heavyweight sent over to Sungevity from Microsoft to see how the software worked, who told Kennedy that the company couldn’t have done such a thing “with 300 of our own engineers.”

Installing the units on Nasheed’s roof is now the last phase of the operation.

“We installed the rails today, and we’ll install the PV modules over the next few days. There are still some conduits to install to the generating room, and some carpentry to do,” Kennedy explains.

As the President’s house is connected to the grid in Male’, the solar cells will feed electricity back into the grid and help power the city when Nasheed is not running the air conditioning or using the microwave.

“My sense is that he’s trying to do something symbolic and make a statement about solutions to climate change,” Kennedy said. “He seems to be trying to lead by example.”

Founder of Sungevity Danny Kennedy suggests the Maldives can develop and export its expertise in renewable energy

The light stuff

The driving force behind solar power is now economic, says Kennedy.

While the capital expenditure for a small unit runs to US$30,000, installations in countries like the US are heavily incentivised and banks are increasingly offering ‘solar financing’ so customers can avoid the upfront hit.

“Solar is now about saving money,” Kennedy says. “The US and Australia give cashback on solar installations, while in the EU the model is a feed-in tariff. In Germany the model pays 40 euro cents per kilowatt hour, so if you install a solar system with a 20 year lifespan, you can sit back and let the thing turn a profit.”

As a result, “Germany‘s projected installation this year is 7000 megawatts – by comparison, Male’s powerplant generates 38.76 megawatts.”

The UK is not far behind Germany, with a proposed 31 pence feed-in tariff: “The UK solar market is going to go gangbusters in the next few years,” Kennedy says.

Feed-in tariffs are the fastest way to promote quick adoption of the technology, Kennedy explains, but incentive models – cashback and feed-in tariffs – “take on the vested interests involved in fossil fuels.”

“The Maldives can move to clean fuel, hedging against fuel price rises while taking on the vested interests of incumbent technology,” Kennedy suggests.

The flat and predictable cost of solar power contrasts with that of fossil fuels, he says, which are expensive for a country like the Maldives to import, subject to price flucutations, and vulnerable to Middle Eastern instability.

“While a small system may cost up to $30,000, it will pay itself back tenfold over its lifespan. It’s a safe and predictable return on investment,” he says.

In the US at least, the price of grid electricity is rising by seven percent per annum, Kennedy explains. The cost of solar units is meanwhile plummeting as production of the devices, led by China, skyrockets.

“Every doubling in production of PV modules represents an 18 percent reduction in price,” Kennedy explains.

“The Chinese have noticed this are increasing production massively, and have doubled production twice in the last three years. There has been a 50 percent drop in price in the last 18 months.”

A country like the Maldives with comparatively low energy requirements has the potential to meet much of its energy demands through a combination of solar, wind and wet (tidal) renewable energy generation, Kennedy suggests, as well as create a great many jobs in the sector.

And if the German experience is anything to go by, that expertise is soon going to be in high demand across the world.

“German companies like Bosch said early on that they are going to become better at this that anyone else, and manage the IP (intellectual property). Now, it’s German engineering staff who are running the Chinese production lines.”

The Maldives could develop its own expertise, Kennedy suggests: “the challenges of powering an isolated island in the Maldives are similar to those of a town in the Australian outback,” he notes.

Kennedy sees the future of power generation as working rather like the internet, running as a grid with many small generators feeding into the system rather than the centralised production and distribution of power.

“I’m not a great advocate of large-scale power plant development, solar or otherwise,” Kennedy says. “It risks replicating the mistakes of the past – it’s a Faustian bargain you make, as with Edison: ‘Give us lights in the streets and we’ll give you a regulated monopoly.’”

Because of the pollution profile, plants are also located further from population centres and up to 30 percent of electricity generated is lost in transmission.

“There are new high-voltage DC lines becoming available but uptake is not substantial,” Kennedy says, predicting a future where power generation is controlled by the consumer and with less wasteful transmission.

“Who pays for that bit in lost in the middle?” he asks: “The public purse.”

With 50 percent of the world’s solar installations in Germany, weather is no longer as great a limiting factor of solar technology either, Kennedy says.

The principle obstacle has rather been one of “political will” – which Nasheed will demonstrate when he clambers onto his roof over the next few days to poses for photos with his new PV cells. Clearly a publicity stunt – but nonetheless a bright idea.

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Comment: New regulation on strikes lacks legality and would wipe out resort workers’ constitutional rights

Citizens in Maldives have recently won important rights. The 2008 constitution guarantees fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech and association. The constitution also guarantees the right to strike, which is an extremely important right for workers. Without the right to strike workers are left powerless. In dictatorships like Saudi Arabia or Burma, the denial of the right to strike is a key weapon in suppressing democracy.

However, it seems that employers in the Maldives, unsatisfied with workers finally having human and labour rights, are doing their best to convince the government to effectively deny those rights.

This has come to light with regard to a draft Ministerial regulation on strikes dated August 11, 2010. The working draft looks to have been written as a birthday present for the resort owners, so one-sided it effectively nullifies workers’ constitutional right to strike.

Does the Minister have the authority to make a regulation on strikes?

Before examining the details of the draft regulation, there is an even more glaring error: it is doubtful that the Minister actually has the authority to make the regulation under the present law.

The first clause of the working draft notes that the regulation is made according to clause 89 of the Employment Act of 2008. That clause states: “Unless otherwise provided in this Act, regulations required to administer this Act shall be made by the Minister.”

What is crucial in this clause is the phrase “administer this Act”. That means regulations can only to be made for matters that the Act has defined, thus regulates and thus are in need of administering.

The Employment Act is concerned with the conditions and regulations of workplaces and the contract relationships for the provision of labour which exist between an individual (a worker) and an employer (which might be a person or a firm). The Act also covers the individual’s entitlements (such as maternity leave, working hours etc).

However, the Employment Act does not mention anything to do with the collective rights of workers in employment or their regulation (such as rules regarding trade union rights in the workplace or trade union recognition).

Chapter 4 of the Act (“employment agreement”) does not mention collective agreements which would be signed by a trade union and an employer. The entire chapter concerns the employment of individuals.

Article 30 of the Constitution of Maldives guarantees the right to form trade unions, yet nowhere in the entire Act are trade unions mentioned. The closest the Act comes is in Clause 21(b)(vi) where discrimination against a worker (as an individual) for membership or activity in a “workers’ association” is declared unlawful.

The Act does not mention fundamental matters related to workers’ collective rights and employment such as trade union recognition, collective bargaining, collective agreements or industrial disputes.

As such, a question must be raised: how can a strike, which like all forms of industrial action by workers is a collective act, be administered by Ministerial regulation when the Act does not address the collective rights and acts of workers or trade unions?

The proposed regulation actually has nothing to do with the Employment Act at present. It is almost certainly unconstitutional. The only way a regulation might be appropriate would be if there were already chapters and clauses in the Employment Act dealing with the collective rights of workers and trade unions.

Wiping out the right to strike

As for the details of the regulation itself these would effectively mean that workers would have no ability to conduct a legal strike. Workers would be completely at the whim of the employer.

Clause 6 of the draft regulation would make it almost impossible for workers to reach a stage where they could go on strike. The regulation provides only an example of a Grievance Procedure, thus making the procedure voluntary. How such a Grievance Procedure is to be put in place and how it would work is left completely undefined. Employers are under no legal obligation to include good faith mechanisms or rights protections.

Given current employment practices in Maldives, workers could simply be dragged endlessly through a procedure which is designed not to produce a result and thus not arrive at any point where a strike could be called.

The regulation contains a stunning contradiction. The regulation defines a strike as “stopping work” yet Clause 8(c) forbids strikers “from disturb[ing] the services they provide or should not create any kind of difficulties in the mean[s] of strike.” This clause actually means workers cannot stop work, since by definition, when workers strike, they are withholding their labour and thus disturbing the services of the workplace.

Take the resorts: would a striking front-desk worker still required to check-in guests? Would a striking chef still be required to cook meals? Would a striking house-cleaner still be required to make beds? With this the employer could easily claim any strike is a disruption and thus the strike would be illegal.

This same vagueness is repeated in Clause 11(iv) of the regulations which forbids workers from “interfere[ing] with customers”. This is extraordinarily vague and would allow any employer to simply claim: by going on strike workers are “interfering” with customers and the strike would be deemed illegal.

Clause 9 of the regulation includes a number of professions who are excluded from the right to strike. International labour standards as governed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are quite clear that with the exception of police and military, all other professions should retain the right to strike. It is doubtful that a regulation excluding so many professions would be acceptable under international human rights norms.

What to do?

It seems that this regulation, even if the Minister were to sign it, despite its clear breach of most international norms regarding workers fundamental rights, would have to ultimately be declared unconstitutional.

The Employment Act, does not give the Minister any authority to make regulations for matters not covered by the Act. Since strikes are a subset of workers’ collective rights and regulations to these rights are not mentioned in the Act, the Minister has no authority to make regulations to administer non-existent sections of the Act.

It is time for a serious rethink. Resort and hotel workers, in fact all workers, in the Maldives need a proper law which protects their collective rights to participate in trade unions, to collective bargaining and to industrial action. It solves nothing when short-cuts which must ultimately be found unconstitutional are tried.

Moreover, this regulation tramples on workers constitutional right to strike to such an extent it could become an international issue, placing Maldives in breach of its human rights commitments and the conventions of the International Labour Organisation.

The real reason that this regulation is being rushed through at this time is the resort owners in Maldives have consistently refused to recognise the collective rights of resort workers. Low wages, lack of transparency with distribution of the service charge, overwork and the high costs of living all remain unresolved problems for most workers.

Instead of engaging in genuine negotiations to resolve these matters with the Tourism Employees Assosiation of the Maldives (TEAM) – the resort workers union – the employers seek to rebuff TEAM at every opportunity.

TEAM is systematically denied recognition by the employers. The employers refuse to negotiate collectively and threaten workers. Workers are arrested and placed in jail at the behest of employers when they strike. Blacklists of known supporters of TEAM are maintained and distributed among employers. Despite these threats workers continue to exercise their constitutional right to strike because this is the only choice they have to resolve their interests. All other avenues are closed by the employers.

The best solution would be for the Government of Maldives to call for tripartite negotiations including TEAM and MATI, designed to reach an agreement for amendments to the Employment Act regarding trade union recognition, collective bargaining and industrial disputes. Or to produce an Industrial Relations Act regarding these matters. This would protect workers’ rights and produce clear and transparent mechanisms to allow for proper negotiations between TEAM and the resort owners and thus go a long way to resolving the root cause of strikes in the resort industry.

But a regulation with dubious constitutionality that effectively erases the right strike is in no one’s interests and will only harm Maldives’ international reputation in regard to democracy and human rights.

Dr Jasper Goss is Information and Research Officer with the Asia/Pacific regional organisation of the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF), the global trade union federation which represents resort, hotel, food and agriculture workers.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]


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Comment: Kitchen maids step out to business and up to leadership

It was 3:00 pm in the afternoon last Ramazan when someone called and asked me to do a translation. He said that I could charge for the work. I told him to mail it to me so that I could have a look.

What I got was a five page contract with legal terms to be translated from English to Dhivehi, and it had to be done by that night. I called up and quoted him my official price and he flipped out.

“Oh man,” he said, “you are crazy. I am doing this for a friend. Go to the kitchen. It is time to cook for breaking the fast.”

My mind raced! Would he have said something similar in the same tone to a man?

Kitchen maids step out to business and up to leadership!

I grew up with a mother who sold material and tailored to earn money. She worked from home. In many households while men are the official breadwinners, the women work from home to earn an income to make ends meet.

Today farmers in the islands are made up of 60 percent women. In other words, women in the Maldives have a long history of entrepreneurship. When I was growing up, there were a couple of ladies in trading and I saw them in the man’s world. I wonder how they felt and what kind of challenges they had. Today with Maldives advancing into the modern world, more Maldivian women have stepped out into the business world.

Globally, the 1920s were a turning point for women to move from traditional roles to modern ideas. In these years the role of women changed, with gender-defined work such as cooks, dressmakers and farm hands moving to professional and technical jobs like doctors, bankers, lawyers etc. Still today, even in the most developed countries, there are conservatives who find it hard to digest this and feel a woman’s place is at home.

The prevalent environment in Maldives is tough for a woman who wants to run a business. I am a social entrepreneur and I started out on my own in 1999. As a woman I have experienced many hurdles, and I am going to highlight here common issues enterprising women face in the Maldives.

Women entrepreneurs find it a big challenge to get people to take them seriously. Women seeking loans beyond micro-financing have difficulties obtaining funds, even with collateral. I know the case of a woman who offered collateral of her two houses to the Bank of Maldives (managed by women) some years ago and she was refused a loan. When her husband went to the Bank with the same business plan and same collateral (with mortgage rights signed over by the woman), it was accepted.

When women hold meetings, many men do not listen to the business idea a woman is selling. Horrendous suggestions such as meeting late at night and in private environments are an indication of this lack of seriousness among men. It is often seen in the light of a favor she is asking. If I am accompanied by a male to a meeting, I still find him being addressed more than me though it is my business.

Sense of guilt

My female colleagues and entrepreneurs also speak of the “guilt issues” that come into play and which limit their success. Guilt for investing time away from the family, guilt for becoming more financially secure than family and friends, guilt for earning more than a spouse and guilt for being successful.

To make it worse, husbands and partners who cannot digest the success of a woman accuse her of receiving favours. Some people (men and women, friends and family) actually think that a woman who wants to start a business is just looking for something to do as a “hobby”.

Women are trained since childhood to work behind the scenes, to not make a fuss, and to take care of others first. Girls grow up in “female” roles with housework prioritised above studies, and the notion that she will marry a good man to have a life.

The contribution of women to financial stability is treated of secondary importance especially when that money is generated at home. Women’s contribution is not documented in the national statistics either. Women in entrepreneurship struggle to improve conditions that support enterprise development at national level.

The Women Entrepreneurs Council (WEC) was initially under the umbrella of the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and was dissolved three years ago without the WEC itself being notified. The move was part of a calculated change in the Executive Board to push out chamber board members, including distinguished and dedicated men committed to economic development of the country. and who supported the Wec.

The media (including Minivan News) ignored the case (with evidence) that the WEC presented, and the report did not appear in the daily newspapers or on the television. The Registrar of the Home Ministry at the time ignored the evidence. The Attorney General (on a personal level) made an aimless attempt to look into the issue that compromised women. Today the documents lie on the table of the present Chamber President who considers an internal audit of the time (with the last five years) possible but has not had the time to look at them.

The documents are in the Ministry of Home Affairs waiting for the present Registrar’s attention. Three registrars have changed since the documents were submitted and the present Registrar has promised to lend us an ear.

The WEC was just beginning to stand on its feet with a successful trial record of development and half a million Rufiya in its account, a solid development plan for four years and a potential contract with UNDP, when the Council was crippled by the Board of the time.

Earlier this year, His Excellency the Vice President listened to the story but it remains one without an end. The President’s staff have been scheduling a meeting with the leadership of the ex-WEC for the last two and half years.

Women experience sexist banter, demeaning comments and exclusionary behavior and continue to push for conditions where they can do business in a politically and socially fair environment.

Assumptions about women, such as in my introductory paragraph, view women as inferior business professionals. Expectations on pricing and wages – with the implication that women lack professionalism – are abusive.

Women tend to devalue their skills, abilities and experience more than men do. Women must value their offerings in order for customers and prospects to value them. The ability to be compensated well for the value a woman provides lies squarely on her ability to look the customer/prospect in the eye and state, with confidence, that it’s worth the price she is charging. So my fees remain… discounts come only after quotation.

Ownership and control of an enterprise by a woman is a big thing. Most women entrepreneurs are very compassionate and caring people, thus bringing complimentary value to business. While women want to express their skill and talent to the world, they should also possess the qualities of devotion, innovation and the capabilities of management and control, lessons that can be learnt from enterprising men. Women are great networkers, tenacious, and are great at relationships, so there is no hurdle too big to overcome.

Once on an interview, a producer of a VillaTV program wanted the presenter to question me about whether a woman would have time to take care of her family obligations if she was engaged outside home. In my opinion, the word obligation puts conditions on women that are interpreted by someone else. A woman should define her priorities and balance her life between work and family. This is one of the hardest challenges for a woman entrepreneur even in developed countries.

To break the ice, women have to put themselves forward and overcome a lifetime of behavioral training – a daunting task for many of us. Men remove one hat before putting on another. Work is work, play is play and family is family. Women insist on wearing all their hats at once and are determined to balance them all. When we enter into business mode, we are still mothers, wives and friends. We are easily distracted by our many other priorities and find it challenging to focus all our attention on one area at a time. Focus ladies!

To be successful as an entrepreneur a woman must be independent, humble, highly successful at personal growth and, for the most part, non-emotional. As a male colleague noted the other day, one big challenge a woman has are the other women who don’t understand her – her values and drive.

It was evident at the Validation Workshop in October 2009 held in Holiday Inn where I sat at a round table with women from the Ministry of Health trying to bring in the perspective of women from private sector into the national plans. The barrier I faced was so impenetrable that I had to get the Counsel of UN facilitator to talk to them to include some of my suggestions.

Women must be bolder and demand respect by showing their success. To receive respect, women should be respectful. To be respectful, women should work with values and rules that shows her principles such as using formal friendly language (a great way to draw the line between personal and professional relationships), staying firm and focused in discussions displaying a professional attitude, keeping meetings to working hours and if necessary stretch to early evenings but not late night hours, setting the latest reachable hour to business contacts by phone, meet in open public places or office during working hours, establish a code for no physical relationships with staff and potential business partners, learn to draw the line when people get abusive or suggestive at meetings, stop mothering when dealing with male business colleagues (sorry ladies but I observe this happening) and dressing professionally.

Women should always be upfront and transparent about their professional experience and what they have accomplished. Upon doing so, people can no longer have ignorant assumptions of women. So women out there, it takes every core of your being to stand above these who choose to talk about people, so you can walk instead with those who prefer to discuss ideas.

Aminath Arif is the Founder of SALAAM School.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Surge in Chinese arrivals just a passing fad, cautions MATI

China has eclipsed the traditional European tourism markets of the Maldives to become the highest contributor of tourist arrivals to the country, but that gain is unlikely to last, says the Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI).

Figures from the Ministry of Tourism indicate that that 15.3 percent of all arrivals this year originated from China – a staggering growth rate of 137 percent compared to the first eight months of 2009.

UK arrivals, traditionally the Maldives’ greatest market, sits at 14.9 percent followed by Italy at 12.6 percent. Average length of stay has dropped to 7.7 days, compared to the same period 8.1 last year.

Secretary General of MATI, Sim Mohamed Ibrahim, told Minivan News that Chinese tourists regarded the Maldives as a “novelty” destination, and that the growth would not last.

“The Chinese can swamp a destination in terms of numbers, but this is not the tourism the Maldives is about. Our product attracts sunseekers – Europeans,” he said.

“The Chinese who come do not come for the sun and the beach – they come because the Maldives is a novelty, a safe destination, and because of their new-found freedom to travel. Resorts are saying there are not many repeat visitors from China.”

Sim said that while it was “a good thing” that the spike in Chinese arrivals had filled in a seasonal gap in the market, Chinese tourists were comparatively low “yield” compared to other markets.

“137 percent growth is huge, but that’s heads-on-beds,” Sim said. This had not “had the impact on yield as much as it should” because of lower-than-average length of stays, uptake of full board packages and a general disinclination among Chinese visitors to spend on resort restaurants, bars and excursions.

“What we’ve seen January to August is that while most traditional markets have grown, except Italy, there hasn’t been much difference in arrivals figures from Jan-August last year. But Germany, France and the UK are all registering growth and picking up.”

Seasonal dips in the Maldives market during warmer months in the northern hemisphere have historically been filled with the arrival of Russians and Japanese, Sim explained.

“he Japanese market is not growing – it used to be a good market but it hasn’t been showing growth, and we need to do more work in Japan,” he said.

Early visitors from Russia used to be among the highest yield tourists, “but they have since become more seasonal like everyone else.”

“South Africa would be a good market for us, but it requires good flight connections, perhaps via Mumbai.”

The Maldives was proving a victim of fashions in the travel industry, Sim noted, particularly in the high-end segment.

“Right now the Seychelles and Mauritius are in fashion. We haven’t done much in terms of destination marketing, and we have lost the buzz we used to have. We have no new products that people can afford, there’s been mismanagement of the local economy, and it’s been hard for the new government to put things back together,” he said.

“Environmental doomsday messages” had not helped attract investors either, he added.

“Hopefully the new budget will have more money for destination marketing.”

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Partisan media obstructing journalists from reporting ethically

The Maldivian media needs to move beyond the basics of reporting and on to media ethics if it is to build its credibility, become independent and break free from the influence of partisan politics, urged visiting journalism trainer Tiare Rath, Iraq Editorial Manager for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).

Rath, an American journalist and trainer who has worked in the US, Africa, Asia and the Middle East for companies including CNN and the New York Times, spoke last Thursday to a small group of Maldivian journalists and NGO representatives about the challenges and opportunities for journalism in a young democracy.

“I have been really impressed with news judgement here, and the understanding of the basic principles of journalism,” Rath said of her experience training young reporters in the Maldives.

“But on the other hand, one of the major issues all my students talked about is resistance among newsroom leadership – editors and publishers. Even if the journalists support and understand the principles being taught, they consistently tell me they cannot apply them,” Rath said. “This is a very, very serious problem that needs to be addressed.”

Rath compared the state of the Maldives media with that in Iraq, “where most of the media is partisan because that’s where the money comes from.”

“They haven’t been able to develop an advertising market, so political parties and powerful individuals back their own media outlets,” she said. “There have been a lot of issues with bias, media ownership and political pressuring of [Iraqi] journalists, and they don’t have the level of legal protection enjoyed by the media in the Maldives.”

However, despite the high-levels of violence obstructing democracy in Iraq, “the news media has flourished – there are more than 300 newspapers in Baghdad alone, and across the country there are thousands of newspapers and many small radio stations, and a lot of news sites and blogs.”

Media in countries like Afghanistan face additional problems, Rath added, “such as the lack of educated young people in the post-Taliban environment who want to be journalists. That has been a major issue.”

In Afghanistan the threat to journalists was primarily harassment and imprisonment, Rath explained, “and there have been efforts by the government to block out the media when it pushes too hard, especially on certain issues like drugs or warlords. The government just issues a media blackout and refuses to engage with the media.”

Even where it was present, “the response to any kind of critical coverage has been really hard. Again it’s a partisan media, because the traditional power brokers are the ones backing and financing it, rather than it being based on advertising [revenue].”

So while it was troubled, the situation facing the media in the Maldives was “a breath of fresh air” in comparison, Rath said.

“While there are challenges, a lot of other countries in a similar period following democratic transition are facing a lot more violence and oppression of the press,” she observed.

Many challenges faced by the Maldivian media were common to countries shaking off the vestiges of authoritarian regimes, she noted.

“A pattern I’ve definitely noticed in newly emerging democracies is that media retains the old style of attending press conferences and spitting out what was said, without doing their critical analysis. When you attempt to be objective it doesn’t mean your sources will always like you, and there may be backlash.”

Even in the West the media faced a lot of criticism, Rath said, “particularly for bias”.

In the UK journalism was the third least respected profession, and in the US it was second last, “right behind lawyers”, she pointed out.

Escaping powerbrokers

For media in an emerging democracy to develop beyond a partisan press and become independent, free from a legacy of political powerbrokers, it must evolve as a business, Rath explained.

“Advertisers do care about politics, but more often they care about money,” she said, “and at least in the US, that means they care only about circulation.

“If you have partisan media, one of the issues you have is that your market is really limited – you’re preaching to the choir. The other audience isn’t going to listen to you. But if you are impartial, there are broader sources of funding purely based on business value. If a news organisation emerges with a real and strong reputation for independence, and strives for objectivity, I do think the advertising dollars will follow, simply because of readership and audience reach.”

Rath said that while she respected the concept of media that was openly partisan and did not strive for impartiality, a trait common to a lot of media in Europe if not the US and UK, “I think it can be damaging in many ways because the credibility of the media is so important. If you don’t even aim for objectivity your market is going to remain very small, and the media is going to be credible only with the party members you are aiming towards.”

Initally, she said, this meant independent media needed a source of funding – an investment – “because it is about money for news organisations. It is important to have a source of funding, whether this is an individual or an advertising base, that cares more about independent media in principle, or who cares purely about money and so would be willing to invest in an independent media outlet that had a lot of potential for growth.”

Another step was ensuring that journalists had an organisation independent of their own newsrooms, such as a professional association, “dedicated entirely to good journalistic practice.”

“I think journalists need a place to meet. One thing I am concerned about in the Maldives is that the political polarisation may also have affected the journalists themselves. The Maldives is very small and everyone feels affected by politics, and has a personal connection to politics.

“I think it is really important for journalists from different news organisations to meet and discuss journalistic issues together. It’s also important to discuss ethics and professional standards, and to debate amongst yourselves what kind of media you want to have. And at the end of the day, if the media comes under attack, they will need to come together and defend themselves.”

The Maldives had a free press, Rath observed, and now it had to fight for respect – “a widespread challenge for anyone trying to fight for ethical journalism.”

“You’ve got a free press. Now how are you going to establish that press, how are you going to build its credibility, and what kind of values do you want it to have? You can technically do whatever you want – but a free press means having responsibility.”

Not as simple

Accepting that responsibility was not as simple as just reporting objectivity, Rath said.

“The model of objective and unbiased journalism has been rightly criticised because of the angle a news station takes on a story. It’s not necessarily bias, it’s part of news judgement, and it’s a huge debate across the industry,” she explained.

“But especially in a new or emerging democracy where there is a lot of political polarisation, it is very important to strive for objectivity to build the credibility of news organisations and to practice these traditional values of journalism, rather than to just be completely caught up in political debate.”

Journalists themselves could push towards more proactive journalism, rather than reacting to press releases and statements by political figures, Rath noted.

“I’m a big proponent of enterprise journalism, where you notice trends, talk to sources and do a feature on it – issues based journalism.

“I’d like to see that in the Maldives, but are there enough bodies? And enough money? It’s still small industry – journalists are assigned to small stories, and when you’re doing 1-3 stories a day you don’t have time to write up a great feature or do non-reactive news because you have to follow events going on around the country. But it’s a huge opportunity in the market.”

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