Day: November 24, 2010

Maldives awarded “World’s most romantic destination” at World Travel Awards

The Maldives has been designated the “World’s Most Romantic Destination” in the World Travel Awards for the second time, beating other nominees including New York, Paris, Tuscany and Venice.

The destination also won ‘leading cruise destination’ and ‘honeymoon destination’ for the Indian Ocean category.

The World Travel Awards also listed the Maldives as the Leading Cruise Destination and Honeymoon Destination in the Indian Ocean, a regional category where it also scooped the Leading Beach and Leading Island destination gongs.

A number of international resort groups operating in the country were also awarded during the evening, with Adaaran picking up an accolade in competition for the World’s Leading Water Villa title.

Companies Banyan Tree and Six Senses also walked away with awards in the areas of World’s Leading Corporate Social Responsibly programme and Leading Luxury Resort Brand respectively.

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Velezinee proposes motion to ‘confirm sanity’ of JSC Chairman

President Mohamed Nasheed’s member on the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), Aishath Velezinee, proposed a motion without notice at today’s JSC meeting “to determine if Supreme Court Justice Adam Mohamed Abdulla, current Chairman of the commission, meets the criteria of possessing a sound mind as required by article 139(c) clause three of the constitution.”

The meeting was cancelled when quorum was lost after Velezinee walked out in protest of the Chair’s alleged refusal to acknowledge the motion.

Velezinee’s motion states that Justice Adam Mohamed was exhibiting “symptoms of a person who has lost his mind” and proposed suspending him from the duties of a judge “until a psychiatric evaluation is conducted under state supervision.”

Attached to the motion was a document titled ‘The Serial Bully‘, drawn from the UK-based workplace bullying website detailing the symptoms of “sociopaths and psychopaths”.

Qualities on the list included “self-opinionated, emotionally retarded, deceptive, superior sense of entitlement and untouchability, financially untrustworthy, overbearing belief in their qualities of leadership, is spiritually dead although may loudly profess some religious belief or affiliation” and “may pursue a vindictive vendetta against anyone who dares to held them accountable.”

Velezinee claimed that the Chair was “systematically evading” the matter of appointing an interview panel to approve judges to the High Court bench, almost two months after the deadline for applications elapsed.

Moreover, as the JSC was yet to adopt a standard operating procedure – the deadline for which passed on January 26 – commission meetings were “under the will and whim of the Chair who refuses to permit the Secretary General to perform independently and exercise absolute control over the working of the Commission.

“As it is JSC can only discuss and decide what the Chair permits, and that, it has become increasingly evident, is nothing,” she said.

While the High Court bench currently has four judges, a three-judge bench is needed to conduct hearings.

Sincerity

Following the cancelled meeting, Ahmed Rasheed, representative of the law community on the JSC, expressed concern with the slow pace of the commission’s functioning.

Rasheed said that the growing backlog of pending tasks “raises questions about the sincerity of some members.”

On November 9, Rasheed joined Velezinee, General Public Member Shuaib Abdul Rahman and Attorney General Dr Ahmed Sawad to lodge letters of protest with the JSC after the Chair did not attend a meeting he had called.

Other members of the commission, Parliament Speaker Abdulla Shahid, MP Afrashim Ali, Civil Service Commission President Mohamed Fahmy Hassan and Judge Abdulla Didi, did not attend the meeting as well.

Velezinee also walked out of the meeting last Sunday, the first one after the 10-day public holiday, claiming the Chair refused to let her speak on the High Court appointments as it was not on the agenda.

Responding to the criticism of his handling of JSC meetings, Justice Adam Mohamed told Minivan News today that he did not refuse to table Velezinee’s motion.

“I saw the motion when I came to the meeting,” he said. “But when I started the meeting and tried to read out the agenda, she interrupted me, got angry and walked off.”

Justice Adam Mohamed also dismissed accusations that he was holding up JSC tasks, explaining that he has called for a number of meetings in past weeks in excess of the legal requirement of one meeting per month.

On the delay to the standard operating procedure and High Court appointments, the Supreme Court Justice said that the deadlines had elapsed when he assumed the chair in late August.

“If they are so concerned about it, they could have passed it since they have been on the commission for all that time,” he said.

Following the end of the interim period in early August, a new Supreme Court bench was hastily instituted by parliament, resulting in a hiatus for the commission until new members along with a new Chair could be appointed.

Justice Adam Mohamed revealed that the current agenda for JSC meetings was “two-pages long”, stressing that while he has authority to order items, “members have the discretion to prioritize an item if everyone wished.”

Opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Dr Afrashim Ali meanwhile arrived at today’s meeting 20 minutes after it began and left shortly afterward.

Asked for a comment on the issues, Dr Afrashim explained that he only grants interview “if it is going to be shown live on TV”.

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2020 Carbon Neutral failure would be “disaster for Maldives”: President

Failure by the Maldives to become carbon neutral by 2020 would be a “complete disaster” for the country, President Mohamed Nasheed today warned during a government unveiling of an audit of the nation’s carbon footprint.

The Maldives’ 2009 Carbon Audit aimed to compile the country’s current carbon footprint in relation to its current energy reliance. The document was fully funded by France-based financier La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild, which will also help to outline and find funding for a “Carbon Neutral Master Plan” to help the country set up how it can begin to meet its aims.

The 2009 audit, which was carried out by BeCitizen, an environmental consultancy based in Paris, France, found that 1.3 million tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) was emitted by the Maldives, with about of half of these emissions coming from diesel power generation.

These emissions corresponded to 4.1 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per individual. By way of comparison, India records 1.7 per person per year, China 5.5, France 9 and the United States 23.5.

Domestic transportation on both land and sea contributed 22 percent of the nations CO2 output during 2009, with the fishing industry and waste treatment processes amounting for 13 and 15 percent of the total output respectively, the audit added.

BeCitizen, of which La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild is a major shareholder, says that in looking ahead to developing a ten year strategy for a national low-carbon overhaul, six main areas needed to be focused on. These focuses include ensuring greater energy efficiency –such as in more efficient domestic appliances and thermal insulation – and the practical use of renewable energy forms like solar and wind power.

The environmental consultancy also pointed to adopting greener forms of transport, waste management programmes and carbon sequestration in areas such as biomass as important focus points to try and cut the existing environmental impact fo the Maldives.

Speaking via a live link up, BeCitizen’s Flora Bernard claimed that it would be possible for the government to become carbon neutral tomorrow if it simply relied on offsetting to compensate for its total carbon footprint.

Offsetting is the practice of engaging in development projects that can provide both provide benefits both to society as well as the climate – such as planting of forests in an attempt to reduce CO2 within the air.
However, Bernard added that such actions were “missing the point” and that a focus on finding sufficient alternatives would be needed.

“Achieving carbon neutrality by 2020 is possible,” said Bernard in a statement. “It will primarily involve the country becoming energy-independent, while ensuring that the solutions also bring other environmental benefits in terms of carbon storage, resource management and biodiversity conservation.”

The high profile of the Maldives’ sustainable aims meant a failure to meet such goals would be unthinkable, Nasheed said.

With the Maldives a key model for other countries seeking to become more sustainable, an inability to meet the unilateral commitments would prove detrimental to wider arguments around the globe for adopting law carbon initiatives, Nasheed said.

If the country did, then “God help us”, the President said. His carbon neutral pledge is thought to be the toughest set out by any nation under the January 2010 Copenhagen Accord.

Despite having yet to pass a 2011 budget for the country within local parliament, Nasheed said that funding for the carbon neutral scheme would come from garnering interest in development among the private sector.

Pointing to a number of inhabited islands in the country without sufficient electrical supplies, he claimed that new investment projects could look beyond traditional fossil fuels as a source of energy to lower carbon alternatives without setting back development.

The President added that with a number of countries showing an interest in low carbon economics, or concern about the potential impact of global warming, there was a generally strong global political desire to find alternative energy investments and solutions.

Within the currently fractious domestic politics of the Majlis, a source in the President’s Office said that the argument for adopting and committing to a so-called Carbon Neutral Master Plan would need to be “well structured” to make it through parliament.

However, the source claimed that the president hoped the potential economic benefits of adopting more renewable power sources could be a strong incentive for business and political interests if efficient solutions could be found. The need to move away from the often volatile market of fossil fuels was described as another key concern for the country.

Just last week, environmental organisation Greenpeace told Minivan News that the Maldives acted more as a symbol than a practical demonstration of how national development and fighting climate change can be mutually exclusive.

Wendel Trio, Climate Policy and Global Deal Coordinator for Greenpeace International, believed that the Maldives can nonetheless play an iconic role in promoting the potential benefits of adopting alternate energy programmes.

In looking specifically at the Maldives being elected as Co-Chair of the SCF, the Greenpeace spokesperson accepted that the country is somewhat limited by its size in the role it can have as an advocate for more sustainable business and lifestyles.

“By coupling both strong words and the need for the big emitting countries in the developed and the developing world to reduce their emissions sharply, with a strong commitment at home, the Maldives has gained respect,” Trio explained.

“However, obviously none of the big emitting countries are looking at the Maldives as an example, as they all claim that their social and economic development cannot be compared to that of a small island state.”

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Kuredhoo staff allege female worker dismissed for wearing headscarf

Staff working at Kuredhoo Island Resort have alleged that the resort five months ago issued a notice stating that it would not be renewing the contracts of female staff members wearing the headscarf, and had since dismissed at least one staff member over the matter.

A staff member currently working at the resort told Minivan News that a notice regarding the matter was issued by the resort five months ago.

“There was a female staff member who wore the headscarf who was asked to leave her job two months ago because the resort’s management refused to renew her employment contract [because] she wears a headscarf,” he claimed.

A second staff member Minivan News spoke to also claimed the resort had notified staff that it would not renew the contracts of staff wearing the headscarf.

The allegation first appeared on the Dhivehi Post news blog, which quoted a female staff member at the resort as saying that elderly women living on a nearby island, employed by the resort for cleaning jobs, were issued the same notice.

Human Resources Manager at Kuredhoo Khadeeja Adam said she did not wish to comment on the matter and referred Minivan News to the resort’s General Manager.

Kuredhoo’s General Manager Andrea Nestle also refused to comment on the matter, but said the allegations she had read in her translation of the Dhivehi Post report were incorrect. She referred Minivan News to the head of Champa Trade and Travels in Male’, Abdulla Saleem.

Saleem told Minivan News that the resort policy was established by the resort’s management team, and said he had nothing to do with the policy.

”The management team works very independently and we have no influence on them,” he said.

Secretary General of the Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI), Mohamed ‘Sim’ Ibrahim, told Minivan News that the issue was a “very sensitive” one, “because some [guests] get a bit taken aback. Some are a bit worried about it because they associate the dress with fundamentalism and militant Islam.”

“We don’t want to encourage people to wear the full burqa when they are serving tourists at the front desk, the first line of contact with guests,” he said.“But we don’t have a problem with them working in the office, or in general. It’s up to the resort owner.”

He noted that the right to wear the headscarf was a fundamental right, but that it was also a legal right for a resort to designate its own uniform and dress code.

The issue of discrimination, he noted, had led to “huge problems” in countries such as France.

A French law passed in 2004 banning the display of religious affiliation in schools, including dress and iconography, sparked protests across the Muslim world and also in countries such as the United States which expressed concern that the restrictions violated the France’s international human rights commitments.

In September 2010, the French Senate passed a bill 246 to 1 making it illegal to wear veils covering the face, with fines of €150 for women and €30,000 for men who forced their wives to do so, doubled in the case of minors.

Amnesty International condemned the French bill as a violation of freedom of expression.

“States have an obligation under international law to respect the human rights of everyone without discrimination on the basis of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status; to protect them against abuses of those rights by third parties, including by private actors within their families or communities; and to ensure they are able to exercise those rights in practice,” the international humanitarian organisation claimed.

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Workers’ group hopes for strike bill committee amendments

The Tourism Employees Association of Maldives (TEAM) claims it remains hopeful that the passing of a bill to the National Security Committee regulating industrial action by resort workers can still be amended from its current form.

Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Ahmed Easa, president of TEAM, told Minivan News that the worker’s group was now waiting to see if amendments relating to the bill made during the committee hearing would address concerns realting to the impact on the right to strike.

In August, the Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) submitted the bill to parliament aimed to regulate industrial action conducted by employees in the Maldives, shortly after a strike at Kurumba resort reduced occupancy to zero.

Parliamentary debate over the bill has obtained both fierce opposition and support from figures across the lucrative tourist industry over arguments that current unregulated strike action is detrimental to travel income.

While Easa claims to be in support of a bill that would provide rules and regulations outlining how workers should conduct strike action, the MP believes the current bill is not such a document, but rather “is mainly drafted to stop strikes.”

The MP argues that the bill in its current form would be unconstitutional and contravene article 31 of the constitution that gives Maldivians the right to strike and article 16 relating to human rights.

It is these arguments that TEAM will hope to pursue in the committee in a bid to amend the bill to set out regulations that it would be willing to back in realation to acceptable strike practice.

The TEAM President claims that he remains more in hope, than optimism that changes will be made to the bill, alleging possible vested resort industry interests within the committee that spans numerous political parties including the MDP and the opposition.

However, should the bill return to the Majlis unchanged, Easa claims he would notify both the President’s Office and the international community in the form of organisations and political bodies like the UN and EU about his concerns.

“The bill is totally against democracy,” he adds. “What we are looking for are regulations that accept that there has to be a reason to strike, and this is how it should be done.

Secretary General of industry body the Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI), Sim Mohamed Ibrahim, said that the organisation, which reprsents a number of the country’s major resort groups, were not looking to prevent strikes. However, he added that the association was looking to prevent strikes from taking place directly on private resort property.

“No striking on the resort is a fundamental right of the owner,” he said. “You don’t strike on the shop floor.”

Sim added that although there may be reasons for workers to strike, these points should not be made in a manner that “inconveniences tourists”. The Secretary General added that this stance need not preclude striking in different environments to the resort.

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EC publishes voter registry for council elections

The Elections Commission (EC) has published the list of eligible voters for the upcoming local council elections on February 5, 2011.

The commission announced yesterday that complaint forms regarding registry issues will now be available from its website and office as well as island and atoll offices.

Following a verification process, an updated list will be published in the government gazette at a later date.

Meanwhile, candidates have been invited to lodge applications starting 9am tomorrow to 4pm on December 8.

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Taliban true to Islamic Ideology, claims Pakistani Tourism Minister

Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Tourism has said that the Taliban truly represent Islamic ideology, resulting in their vilification by the United States of America, according to local media reports in the country.

Maulana Attaur Rehman was reported by the Pakistan-based newspaper Dawn to have made the claims at a public gathering in the country this week, claiming terrorism cannot be defeated unless the US and the world gave respect and equal rights to “the muslims”.

Rehman is a member of Pakistan’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam political party, the newspaper adds.

“Ulema and Taliban are the true followers of Islamic ideology and America is the biggest terrorist of the world, which is creating hatred against them,” said Rehman.

“It is a misconception that ulema and Taliban are against coexistence of people with different religions, in fact it is America which is against the interfaith harmony to maintain its hegemony on the world,” he added.

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RAF man says Gan reunion the inspiration for Addu Atoll hospital fund

A recent return to Gan for one former member of Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) has reportedly been the inspiration for a fund aiming to strengthen medical facilities on the island.

Richard Houlston, from Devon in the UK, spent a year of his RAF service in Addu Atoll between 1969 and 1970, where he worked to maintain transmission equipment to support a nearby British airbase operated from Gan, reports the Express & Echo newspaper, published in Exeter in the UK.

Speaking to the newspaper, Houlston said that the Gan Scholarship Fund, which hopes to raise about £10,000 (Rf202,664) to provide training and equipment in order to try and boost medical facilities in the area, was formed after a visit to the island by 28 airmen the island earlier this year.

After being greeted and looked after by the people of Addu Atoll during a visit, which also included time for a spot of diving, Houlston said the airmen were concerned by the standards of healthcare available to local people.

“There is a hospital on the island of Hithadhoo, where I was working, but it struggles to give anything more than a basic service,” he told the paper. “The closest proper hospital is in India, over 1,000 miles away.”
At present, Houlston said £1,600 (Rf32,000) has been raised for the fund.

The RAF were based at Gan from the early 1950s to the mid 1970s.

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Group attacks ‘Scoop’ with smoke bomb

A group of people attacked well known restaurant ‘Scoop’ in Chandhanee Magu with a smoke bomb on Monday evening.

The police forensic team attended the restaurant and took the remains of the smoke bomb for investigation.

A person from the restaurant told Minivan News that the group came and threw the smoke bomb and ran away.

”There were lots of customers inside the place when they attacked,” he said. ”They were all forced to move out from the place as the whole place was covered with smoke.”

He said he did not see the attackers as they “were quick” and the attack was “a shock”.

”It was a handmade bomb of foil and some other materials,” he said.

Police Sub Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said the police attended the scene and took the remains of the material.

”It is too early to say it was a deliberate attack,” he added.

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