Day: January 16, 2007

The Indian Home Secretary, V.K. Duggal, has left Male’ after a two-day good will visit focused on improving coastal security.

Secretary Duggal’s visit was primarily aimed at strengthening bilateral relations, and emphasised ways in which the countries could cooperate in tackling terrorism, organised crime and drug smuggling.

Duggal and a four-man delegation came to Male’ following recent claims by intelligence agencies which claimed the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba was planning to use uninhabited islands in the Indian Ocean as a base for attacking ships along the Indian coastline.

In November, India’s Home Minister, Shivrai Patil expressed grave concern when he revealed that the coastal waters near India were “coming under increased threats from terrorist groups”.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the largest and most active Islamic terrorist organisations in South Asia, is currently based in Pakistan and has a history of carrying out major terrorist attacks against the Republic of India.

Lashkar’s agenda, outlined in a pamphlet titled “Why are we waging jihad”, includes the restoration of Islamic rule over all parts of South Asia, Russia and China. The Maldives has vowed to do all it can to protect its northern neighbour from any type of terrorist attack.

The Maldives and India have a history of alliance. In 1988 India signed a defence and security cooperation with the Maldives, which resulted in New Delhi training the Maldives’ defence and police personnel and supplying equipment.

The Coast Guards of the two nations also conduct a biannual training exercise, and Indian Navy and Coast Guard ships regularly visit the Maldives on goodwill and operational turn round (OTR) visits.

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Minister of Education Zahiya Zareer has said “a lack of quality teachers and capable school administrators” is “the biggest challenge facing the education sector.”

In an interview with Television Maldives earlier this week, the Minister also said poor quality foreign teachers were jeopardising young people’s education.

“This has been the problem last year, this year and even now,” she said. But she promises 2007 will see some much needed changes.

Speaking at a ceremony in Male to mark the beginning of the new academic year yesterday, Zareer said that one of her Ministry’s primary goals was to strengthen the Maldivian education system in order to make it “more effective”.

She said she is committed to starting several new programmes aimed at improving the standards of teachers, which include building a ‘Teacher Resource Centre’ in every atoll and providing advanced teaching courses to educational staff.

Zahiya said one of her main priorities for the new academic year was to, “make sure that the foreign teachers hired have excellent qualifications.”

But without proper funding it will be impossible to hire any teacher of adequate calibre, says Shehenaz Abdulla, Shadow Education Secretary. She claims nearly all the country’s education difficulties boil down to lack of funding.

“The problem is that only 10 per cent of the budget is allocated to education,” says Abdulla. “We can’t pay descent foreign teachers a high enough salary to want to immigrate to the Maldives, so instead foreign teachers who are not good in their own country come to the Maldives to teach. It is a disgrace.”

Abdulla went on to say that another problem is the government can’t distinguish between quality and quantity.

“In 2000 during the government’s educational expansion a mistake was made,” said Abdulla. “The government would proudly say: ‘we trained 200 teachers,’ but in training them so quickly the standards were lowered. As a result, today, we have a lot of teachers who do not have the standards that we expect.”

A study conducted by the Ministry of Higher Education, Employment and Social Security, released last month, showed a significant increase in the number of expatriate employees.

“At the beginning of the year a lot of things are said, but you have to ask yourself: ‘why haven’t they started the academic year by implementing their proposals? Why wait until the middle of the year?…If they are really committed to what they say, then I would expect to see it by now,” said Abdulla.

But the Minister says her commitment is clear, and highlighted the work her department has been doing to improve standards of preschool teachers. She says the government is working hard to identify the problems would soon introduce a new plans.

She also promised all the tsunami damage would be repaired this year, saying several schools were already rebuilt and ready for teaching.

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Special Majlis MPs charged with forging the legislative framework of democracy in the Maldives have failed to agree on whether the constitution should be ratified bit by bit, or all at once.

The 26 opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MPs have called for the parliament to enact the separate parts of the constitution one by one, with each new article, amendment or chapter being ratified as they are agreed upon. They say this will speed up the pace of reform.

But the government’s Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) does not want the constitutional changes to be implemented incrementally, but all at once. It wants the constitution to be sent to the President for ratification only at the end of the drafting process.

But the government’s motion on the issue, which was proposed by Meemu member Moosa Nizar and seconded by Mohamed Sulaiman, also a member for Meemu Atoll, was defeated when put to the vote.

Only 45 members voted for the motion, out of 81 who attended. That meant the motion fell, as a total of 58 votes are needed, rather than a simple majority. 17 members voted against, with 5 abstentions. 2 members did not participate.

Five other motions to amend the constitution also fell and by the afternoon session, when the details of the referendum over a parliamentary or presidential system was being debated, 6 members walked out and the session had to be cancelled, as there were fewer than 57 members remaining.

Every session of the Special Majlis has been cancelled due to low attendance in 2007, adding to many people’s frustration at the slow pace of reform.

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