Where does all the dollars go?

The leakage of foreign currency from the country has never been addressed till now. The major sectors in the country employ foreign labor who take away much of the tourism dollar earned. The high leakage from the tourism sector itself worsens the staggering situation. A large percentage of the tourism dollar goes to the travel agents, while importing all major essentials including fruits, vegetables and meat for the tourist resorts also adds on to this. Moreover the large number of expatriates employed in resorts also adds on to this. Sadly there are also so many laborers employed, who can be easily replaced by Maldivians. The businessmen are more worried about the immediate profit they gain from employing cheap labor, rather than the long-term impacts of this on the country’s economy.
Another booming industry in the country is the construction industry which too employs foreign cheap labor. While this group of manual labor doesn’t cost much to the loss of foreign money, the heaviest burden is put on by professionals such as doctors, engineers, nurses, teachers, accountants etc.
As I have some experience from the education sector and lot of my friends work in this sector, I would share some of my thoughts. From my days of schooling till now the strangest thing in the Maldivian education system is the “disease” called “tuition” or in other words private tuition. It’s such an irony that even the most intelligent and capable students are either required to undergo private tuition or forced to do so by parents who want their children to do the very best. I believe the tuition culture was a creation from our beloved foreign teachers. Even though a large proportion of these teachers are genuine and working hard to enhance their students’ performance some teachers never make enough effort in their daily routine school teaching. Instead they priorities their tuitions and spend so much time on private tuitions they neglect their classroom teaching. The immense amount of money paid on tuitions is leaked out from the economy and hence will elevate the dollar shortage problems. Moreover these teachers are paid more allowances than local Maldivians doing the same jobs. My suggestion is that all teachers be paid on a packaged basis, which could be revised every 3 years. For instance based on the current situation all foreign secondary teachers can be given a package of ten thousand rufiyaa. Similarly higher secondary teachers can be given 12 thousand and principals can be given 15 thousand. Since there is no way to stop the tuition business of foreign teachers this kind of package pay will lessen the burden on the dwindling economy of the country. A similar package can be given to doctors and nurses and other professionals as well.
Foreign laborers also take on manual jobs which are considered dirty by locals such as garbage collection from households. In my opinion this can also be regulated if a proper municipal waste collection be setup. It will be worth investing a high amount to ensure that on a long run this dollar is not leaked out. For instance a company can do collection at certain times of the day. Male’ can be divided to small regions and collection can be set up. Also special collection vehicles can be designed instead of Lorries or pickups as they are too large to move around some small streets.
Every little effort is worth in a big crisis, like this.

Provinces are essential for good governance

The creation of provinces by the newly elected government turned futile due to the anticipated resistance from the Opposition. There is the talk of government expenditure and increase in government spending due to the larger number of political appointees. However a large proportion of these appointees were the councilors anticipated to bring a local level of governance by electing them through a local election. The intention of local level governance was based on good governance principles of empowerment of locals to participate in the decisions that affect their lives.
The form of decentralization the government is advocating is called “devolution” where sub national units of governments or provincial level governments are created and strengthened financially and legally to manage a designated province. This is the very first of a long phase of good governance. The aim of this strategy is to create more open, responsive and effective local governance, resulting in a representational system of local Island level decision making. By making provisions for local island communities and provincial level of governance the local islanders can effectively manage their own affairs. Additionally closer contact between central and local authorities can also be achieved, enhancing effective systems of local governance enabling local people’s needs and aspirations to be heard where by making the government interventions more socially accepted.
Sadly the Parliament has a majority of very young but charismatic members with very little experience on governance and local livelihoods. Some of them are just fresh graduates and many others have not had good education and hence cannot comprehend the importance of this. President Nasheed’s efforts are immense to advocate on these issues, however the opposition twists and turns the story. We need provinces as providing all services to the highest standards are neither feasible nor financially sound at island or atoll level. As a matter of fact the population would be too small to provide any services on a user pay basis. Another argument from the opposition is that there will be issues of resource allocation as most of the fishery resources are common to all Maldivians regardless of the island or atoll. I believe that this is not an issue if we look at the broad context of provinces. If all land and water is state property it will all be equal to all citizens. The opposition however is confusing federalism and decentralized governance. Federalism as created in some countries like Australia is totally different from decentralized governance. In Australia the Commonwealth was created by states to run their international and other affairs and hence this system and the model of provinces we follow for good governance is totally different.
We need a parliament of highly efficient and experienced professionals unlike those who babble and waffle as the saying goes “empty vessels make more noise”.