Day: June 25, 2011

“Discrepancies” prompt MNDF to oversee IT upgrade to curb labour trafficking

The Maldives will not become “a nest for human trafficking”, President Mohamed Nasheed pledged during his weekly radio address, although he acknowledged “many failures in the efforts by government agencies to maintain expatriate records.”

Speaking during his weekly radio address, Nasheed said there were discrepancies between the numbers of expatriate workers reported by the Human Resources, Youth and Sports and the Department of Immigration and Emigration.

The Human Resources Ministry claimed there were 74,000 foreign workers in the country, Nasheed said, while records at the Department of Immigration said there were 94,000 – suggesting that at least six percent of the country’s population is unaccounted for.

Nasheed said the government estimated that 40,000 expatriates in the country were working illegally. The situation had reached “an alarming level”, he said, “due to failure to investigate illegal workers, and lack of a systematic approach to [monitor] arrivals, employment and living conditions of expatriates.”

The President said he had tasked the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) with overseeing the upgrade of IT and infrastructure at both the Human Resources Ministry and the Immigration Department.

He also announced the launch of a special police investigation into “any unlawful activity that might have led to the increasing number of illegal workers.”

“We will do everything possible to make the Maldives a country that respects human dignity, and ensure all Maldivians respect human rights and pursue a civilised lifestyle,” Nasheed said.

The government has placed greater urgency on addressing the problem of labour trafficking amid wider concerns over the health of the economy – particularly the foreign currency shortage. One report from the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) estimates that every expatriate worker remits US$100 per month to their families back home, for a total drain of US$8 million every month – a greater amount than the country earns from its new Tourism Goods and Services Tax.

By far the greatest number of expatriate labourers in the country are Bangladeshi nationals, and to a much lesser extent, Sri Lanka.

Former High Commissioner of Bangladesh Professor Selia Mohsin told Minivan News last year that 40 Bangladeshi nationals were arriving at the High Commission’s reception desk daily, “having come to the Maldives and found they have nothing to do”. She claimed that unscrupulous employment brokers in both countries were exploiting potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year from illiterate and uneducated rural Bangladeshi families desperate for better opportunities.

Under Maldivian law, foreign workers arriving in the Maldives must have a work permit issued by the Immigration Department. This is obtained through an employer or agent, who must first request a foreign worker quota from the Ministry of Trade and Human Resources.

“The Maldivian [side] gets into connection with the Bangladeshi brokers, gets a business permit from the Ministry of Human Resources, says they want to recruit and gets a quota for more workers than they require – if they require any at all – and then ask a Bangladeshi counterpart to bring in the workers,” Professor Mohsin told Minivan News last year.

Brokers charged individual workers up to US$4000 to arrange their employment in the Maldives, she said, explaining that in many cases the family home and land was sold or mortgaged to raise this fee, split two-thirds in favour of the Maldivian broker.

One case that arrived on her desk – an application approved by the Ministry of Human Resources – was a request for 1800 workers for an unspecified construction project.

“Those people would have come [to Male’] had I not checked. Had I not done it, 1800 people would have sold their homes and become delinquent in the Maldives. This did not bother a Maldivian broker,” she said at the time. “Hell is not good enough for the people who are doing this.”

More recently, Immigration Controller Abdulla Shahid revealed that Bangladeshi nationals will be issued work visas by the Maldives High Commission in the national capital of Dhaka, in an attempt to address booming numbers of workers arriving in the country. These workers would require additional documents verified and issued in Bangladesh before their work visas and ID cards could be issued in the Maldives.

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Cemetery used for sex and drugs, says Council, demolishing walls

The walls of the cemetery in Maafaanu have been demolished by Male’ City Council, reports Haveeru, after the Council received complaints that the area was being used for sex and drug dealing.

“Public complaints were received about widespread abuse and trade of illegal drugs and inappropriate sexual activities carried out inside Maafannu Cemetery,” Deputy Mayor Ahmed Shamah told Haveeru. We will expose those places.”

Shamah said the Council would observe the impact of opening the area on the local drug trade and then determine whether to demolish the walls of other cemeteries in the city.

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Rufiya world’s second worst-performing currency: Bloomberg

International financial news agency Bloomberg has reported that the Maldivian rufiya is the world’s second worst-performing currency, after the Suriname dollar and above the Kenyan shilling.

The Maldives has been faced with a shortage of foreign currency for over a year due to a high budget deficit, spiralling state budget, economic disconnect from the high-earning tourism industry and political obstacles to reducing expenditure or implementing tax reform.

Earlier this year the government introduced a managed float of the currency within 20 percent of the pegged rate of Rf12.85 to the dollar, in a bid to overcome black market currency trading. The exchange rate shot to the maximum permitted Rf15.42, where it remains, and convertibility of the currency into dollars remains sporadic.

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Uncertainty remains over scale of Maldives piracy threat

With two separate attacks this month by Somalian pirates within a 30 nautical miles of Trivandrum, India, one maritime expert has warned that the Maldives’ growing use as crossroads for shipping routes make its own waters and businesses an increasingly attractive target in the future.

Tim Hart, a security analyst specialising in piracy from around the Horn of Africa for Maritime and Underwater Security Consultants (MUSC), told Minivan News that the two attacks reported this month off India’s southern coast raised wider security issues for the Maldives that have previously affected other nearby archipelago nations like the Seychelles.

While the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) this week said that the country’s territorial waters had not come under direct attack from piracy originating from Somalia, a spokesman said it shared the UN’s concerns over possible threats in the Indian Ocean.

Tourism angle

Increasing numbers of refugees from Somalia are flooding into northern destinations such as Kenya and Yemen, and with limited opportunities for those remaining, Hart said piracy was at believed to be the country’s second largest source of revenue.

In this lucrative market place for piracy, the UN has expressed concerns that the Indian Ocean is becoming in key battleground in trying to stem maritime attacks as suspects move increasingly further from Somali shores.

Hart said that as cargo fleets moved closer to the Maldives to try and ensure safer shipping routes, pirates were likely to follow in the search of viable targets.

Aside from the potential impact to the country’s own shipping enterprises, the maritime expert added that tourism had also been affected by piracy in other Indian Ocean nations.

“The Maldives is a large group of islands that can make monitoring difficult like in the Seychelles,” he said. “The [Seychelles] back in 2009 had a pirate issue that seriously affected its tourism. This has also been seen around the coast of Kenya in areas like Mombasa, where cruise ships were coming under attack in some cases.”

According to Hart, although cruise ship attacks are relatively isolated occurrences, the UK parliament has recently raised issues over an incident in Kenya that directly targeted tourists on board a vessel – an event that significantly affected cruise interest in the region.

“With the Maldives’ territories made up largely of ocean, (the country is 99 per cent water) the concern is that pirates might become influenced to make similar attacks there,” he added.

Targeting isolated resorts would be outside the traditional modus operandi of Somali pirates, Hart said, explaining that they only attacked targets other than merchant vessels out of opportunity.

“It really depends on how desperate a particular group of pirates becomes, generally larger merchant vessels offer the largest incentives for ransom,” he said. “To set foot onto an island, highjack and kidnap tourists and then try to get back to Somalia using their vessels would be very difficult.”

Despite the challenges posed by such an attack, Hart said that it had not been unheard of for pirates to mount land-based assaults in areas like the Niger Delta.

“Pirates are known to be very adaptive in terms of their methods and targets,” he said. “Wherever someone has tried to prevent them from operating, they have changed their target areas and tactics.”

However, Maldivian tourism officials and insiders have identified piracy as a potential security concern for the resort industry.

Adapting to piracy challenges

Hart claimed that the Maldives could take some lessons from the Seychelles in terms of further tightening maritime security against potential acts of piracy, he added that adopting a fix-all approach to the problem was impractical.

“With regards to piracy, it is difficult to set out a one-stop shop in terms of reducing risks, though I would suggest looking at how the Seychelles has operated in 2009 and 2010. Because of recent monsoon weather [in the Indian Ocean region], defining attack areas and establishing operational islands is very difficult,” he claimed. “However, anything to support additional maritime surveillance to protect islands and [local] waters would be encouraged.”

In terms of a national strategy for piracy prevention, MNDF Major Abdul Raheem said earlier this week that the Maldives is already collaborating with international naval forces – under wider UN military programmes – to patrol and monitor its territorial waters from pirate threats.

Raheem said that despite the serious concerns raised over potential piracy attacks in the Maldives, the MNDF would continue with existing initiatives to try and protect its waters in collaboration with naval forces from other nations like India, Turkey and the US. These nations have taken part in patrols across the country in the last few years.

“Piracy is seen as a major problem in the Maldives and we are very concerned about possible attacks occurring in our waters,” he said at the time. “However, we have not recognised piracy threats flaring up [around the Maldives]. With help from other nations, particularly India, we are continuing patrols.”

Raheem stressed that some Somali vessels had drifted into the country’s waters – often with engine troubles – though it was not clear if they were potential pirate threats or refugees trying to escape the country. Hart claimed that the dilemma over confirming legitimate pirate suspects was a major difficulty in policing international waters against attacks.

“The difference between a pirate and a refugee is often a crew that have thrown their weapons overboard. You have to catch pirates in the act, otherwise it can be impossible to try and stop them.”

From his experiences of studying emerging pirate threats off the Horn of Africa, Hart said it was increasingly common – even in the Indian Ocean – for Somali vessels to wish up on local coasts with no traces of weapons on them, then claiming that they are fishermen lost at sea.

“In certain cases, as opposed to dumping weapons at the threat of being spotted by naval vessels, some pirates will use reconnaissance and GPS systems and have weapons stored securely nearby in order to prepare for possible attacks on vulnerable targets.”

Hart said the situation was further complicated by the tens of thousands of Somalian refugees trying to escape the country that is wrought with political and social instability.

Just this week, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency reported significant increases in the number of refugees from the country, with 20,000 nationals estimated to have attempted the arduous journey to escape to a Kenyan refugee camp in the last fortnight alone.

According to the report, the Dadaab refugee camp built initially for 90,000 people is now home to 360,000 displaced residents. The AFP report suggested that 1.46 million people are thought to have been displaced in Somalia.

Hart said that the domestic difficulties within Somalia, along with its geographic location, had made piracy a lucrative revenue source amidst the country’s many socio-political uncertainties.

“Piracy is a symptom of the problems being seen on the land. A lot of people have been trying to escape the civil war in the country’s south and have been trying to move north to areas like Yemen and Kenya,” he said. “Pirates have also used the very strategic [maritime] location that the Horn of Africa offers and exploited it.”

Amidst the difficulties of trying to find domestic solutions within Somalia as a means of confronting piracy, the UN Security Council has continued to discuss the formation of international courts and prisons to try and bring convicted pirates to justice.

However, Hart said that the effectiveness of these prisons as a potential deterrent to Somali nationals turning to piracy was uncertain.

“At present in Somalia, piracy is the country’s second largest industry. There are already huge risks, but you go out to sea and potentially have huge gains to make,” he claimed. “One possible deterrent would be being arrested and being held in prison. However, even these prisons are likely to be a better environment than life for many in places like Mogadishu – the Somali capital.”

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Maldives to receive up to US$30 million in alternative energy funding

The Maldives will receive up to US$30 million from the Climate Investment Fund (CIF)’s Scaling Up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) to pilot renewable energy, the President’s office has stated.

CIF said the Maldives could potentially access a further US$60 million in reserve, following the CIF 2011 Partnership Forum being held in Cape Town, South Africa.

“The CIF’s Strategic Climate Fund gives priority to highly vulnerable least developed countries, including the small island developing states,” said the President’s Envoy for Science and Technology, Ahmed ‘Sappe’ Moosa.¨As momentum grows for climate action on the ground, the CIFs can be a real game-changer.”

The Maldives last year spent 25 percent of its listed GDP, a total of US$244 million, on importing fuel. Most of this was marine diesel used to power the country’s dhoni and speedboat fleet.

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Letter on Thilafushi pollution

We appreciate the efforts all of you have contributed in reporting news and events all over the country. Your reports on politics, social welfare, education, environment are well covered and appreciated, however, there are various key areas that the media has been lax in exploiting.

I live close to the new police complex in Galolhu, and just like hundreds of other people, I go jogging at the track close by every day. If you pay a visit to the track around 7:30pm when all the lights on the track are lit, you will see the whole sky whitened with a fog. TOXIC SMOKE from the burning of garbage on Thilaafushi.

It is becoming impossible to use the track and the football grounds between 6:00pm and 11:00pm due to this air pollution, in addition to the excruciating garbage smell from ‘the Male waste collection yard next to the grounds. Air pollution in Male is at unacceptable level, and presumably it is due to mis-management of waste in Male and in Thilaafushi through prevailing means of disposal. The public is exposed to excessive toxic fumes, and more worrying and annoying is to see small school kids engaged in athletics while at the same time inhaling all the toxic residues.

A closer look at the water on the beaches in Thilaafushi it is contaminated with all kind of toxins. The amount of insects and pests ranging from rodents, flies is extremely too much and resorts close by are facing the worst fly infestations ever. Food poisoning due to contaminated fish is a common thing on Thilaafushi, and also in Male. Irrespective of government advice, fishermen still get fish from polluted reefs and waters surrounding Thilafushi and Male’.

Media is one of the strongest means of public awareness and communication. As you continue educating the public on waste management and proper sanitation, we request you to expose facts on negligence or improper management of waste, relay public concerns over health risks connected to this pollution, and maybe start a campaign to ban the sale of fish taken from waters surrounding Thilaafushi and Male’.

Hospitals and clinics are full with people suffering from bacterial and viral illnesses. Ecoli is already reported last week, dengue is on the rise, and surprisingly, Maldives has seen the deaths of very young kids and teenagers to chronic cancers, and illnesses related to lungs, kidney, liver, etc. I mean, as a concerned parent it worries me not to know reasons for such. Probably its time the government invests or seeks professional assistance in research on ‘the health side effects of living around air polluted environment for long. What could be the problems that may arise decades later or are the medical issues faced today related to this pollution?

Please take some time and visit the jogging track any evening after 7:30 to experience it for yourself. Once again, thank you for all the media work.

Edward, a concerned resident of Male’

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