Day: December 28, 2006

The Finance Minister, Gasim Ibrahim, was hospitalised on Thursday morning after contracting what is thought to be the Chikungunya virus.

Gasim was reportedly rushed to ADK Hospital at around 2:30am suffering high fever, one of the symptoms of the potentially deadly virus.

The virus has spread across the Maldives like wildfire in the past two weeks, claiming a number of lives.

Hospitals and health post are reportedly packed with patients who have been diagnosed with the fever. One such hospital, IGMH, in Male’, is so full that it is not admitting any more patients.

Health experts say the fever is being spread through mosquitoes and that heavy rains over the last couple of months have increased the number of those infected.

As a result, the Department of Public Health is now calling on the public to drain every possible entity that harbours standing water, as they are favourable for mosquito breeding.

An official from the department said that as of December 19, 135 Maldivians had been suspected of being infected with Chikungunya, which also recently broke out in both India and Sri Lanka.

Gasim’s ill heath temporarily postponed the debate over the 2007 budget in Thursday’s session of the People’s Majlis.

Speaker Ahmed Zahir told parliamentarians that Gasim was unable to attend the session because he is “suffering from a fever… which seems to be Chikungunya.”

State minister Abdulla Jihaadh stood in for Gasim during the debate.

Gasim is the Maldives’ most powerful oligarch, controlling a billion-dollar business empire believed to employ some 10 percent of the country’s workforce.

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The police have arrested “senior members” of street gangs accused of orchestrating three days of violence that rocked Male’ earlier this month.

“Those arrested are those who were directly responsible for the violence,” a police spokesperson told Haveeru, a government newspaper, on Tuesday.

“We are currently interrogating them. The investigation is ongoing,” the police spokesperson added.

Ten people, including three police officers, were injured and tens of thousands of rufiyaa worth of property was damaged as rival gangs battled each other in the capital on 16, 17 and 18 December.

The police say a total of nine people have so far been arrested in connection with the disturbances.

The violence is believed to have been sparked by two specific incidents, the beating of a thirteen-year-old boy, who was hospitalised earlier this month and, on Sunday 17 December at around 11:30pm, a violent attack on a man at Trends restaurant.

The incidents sparked retribution which saw trouble escalate throughout the night of the 17. Armed gangs were seen roaming the streets with swords, knives, bats and other weapons.

The police were heavily criticised by members of the public for failing to quell the violence soon enough. The police, however, insist they did everything they could to stop the violence.

Gang warfare in the overcrowded capital has now reached a level which the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) says is unprecedented, and “totally shocking.”

The growing gang culture is in part blamed on widespread heroin addiction among the country’s youth population.

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