Revisiting the values

community elders meeting

Any project by a political party or government “to create awareness and public education” will very likely be met with skepticism and be quickly associated with political  propaganda. Its exactly the same thing that happened with the recent efforts to start a project just like that. If they were to do it right, they should have anticipated this and avoided the labeling. But the problems are there and nobody doubts it. We have harassment of foreigners, robbery, mugging of foreign teachers, doctors, students threatening and intimidating teachers, gang wars and all the vices one can think of in incredibly small communities. Blaming it all on lack of employment is the easy excuse not to think seriously about the issue. So yes there is an issue or rather an abundance of issues and better we acknowledge the facts now do something about it.

A big one time one year project to ‘reeducate’ will not work in this case because we seems to have the fundamentals wrong in this case. Over the years, we have unthinkingly created monster sized issues: of ignorance of social skills, respect for persons and races, blotted out the definition of corruption and failed to install the values based stories in the young.  Examples.

• We still do not have the equivalent for phrases like thank you or the expectation for that in the normal discourse. So if you give me a sweet you will very likely get a smile from me and that’s it. Nor is it particularly beneficial to waste precious time thanking and ‘welcoming’ the thanks, it looks artificial but that’s where we are.
• For years now, we have been ridiculing fellow human beings from neighboring countries in our dramas, and films (which are in essence part of our literature) with characters like “Pindey” who is the perpetual fool (Bangladeshi), not good for anything but ridicule. Maybe a story might have a use of such character to satisfy our ego or whatever, but overdoing this has created a sense of superiority and there are fellow humans suffering exactly because of this. Everyday there are hundreds of Bangladeshi waiters and servers who are subjected to verbal abuse in tea shops and café’s which is the validation of the above observation.
• Corruption is so endemic in our society that it’s hardly recognizable now. From simple things like getting preferential treatment in hospitals and banks because of relatives who work inside to big things which involve thousands or millions of rufiyaa, we are flushed with it, if nothing else.

So verily seems we have to start somewhere with something. We have to change our attitudue to ourselves and foreigners alike. We have to start a values based system in education and upgrade the books where the stories are missing. Instead of “Foolhudhiguhandi” stories we shall go for stories that actually show kindness and good manners to young ones.

The usual fraudsters stole the Mayday rally.

for the real workers it was a labour of love…

The Mayday rally was hijacked by the usual gang; politicians. Politicians from both sides claimed they did and this and that workers and they plan yet to do more of these and those in the future. But it was all baloney.  They were just unkind in not giving the workers cause their backing and considerable voice. What they did was to steal the workers cause and do the usual politicking.

ports workers and TEAM

Here are the facts about last Mayday rally:

• The number of the participants could not be over 100. The low turnout could be still about people not ‘getting’ the deal about workers. Most seem to have the idea that Mayday and workers rights is all about resort workers or civil workers. It is about every worker, but that message doesn’t seem to have been delivered.
• There were 3 main groups of workers represented in the rally. They are the usual redshirts of TEAM, the predominantly girl powered civil service, and the diehard port workers union.
• There were no agendas or abundance of them depending on the way one takes it. The list of grievances shouted over the sound system include among other things, longer working hours for parliamentarians, calls to ratify or implement various provisions of workers rights bills, empowering local workers etc. In short, there was no logic, it was all free speech.

the fraudsters who stole the workers cause

Compared to the small but ‘real’ workers who participated in the Mayday rally, the fake rally conducted by the politician’s was well attended and well organized. They had their drummers, cheerleading girls, beautiful yellow headbands and yellow t-shirts written with the usual demands like ‘stop police brutality’ etc.

pity the civil workers

If we are going to do this right the next time, its important to hardtalk the issue of hijacking the workers cause with the politcians. Just because honourable EASA is an MDP parliamentarian,  should not mean we shall let the politican’s use our name to promote their agenda. Also activism works. We the workers have to be more active to promote our views on all platforms, to promote our views. Its easy to call, demand, ask to ratify or implement this or that but without compelling momentum by voting public,  politician’s do not budge. They are thicker than that!

Long live the workers.

Mayday at Maldives, the drudgery continues…

Isn’t it ironic that most resorts in Maldives still do not recognize May 1 as a public holiday despite Mayday being officially declared a public holiday in 2011 by then president Nasheed? It shall be more so, considering the fact that this affects tourism workers who are by far the most productive workers and the most deserving of a Mayday break from workplace. However stubbornness have it, that its always the unproductive, demoralized, polarized civil workers who gets all the benefits while the resort workers toil hard, unloved and uncared for. This is not to belittle the civil workers,  but to emphasize a massive wrong doing done to resort workers which nobody seems to notice. On the issue of Mayday, it is indeed past time that we seem to come to a conclusion about which is a public holiday, which is a govt. holiday, a bank holiday, or a religious holiday or whatever. Currently the resort HR’s are still sticking to an outdated portion of the hard-fought-and-almost-lost-cause-called-labour-rights-bill which has a section for “miscellaneous matters” where it  says:

“public holiday” shall mean Fridays, Day of Commemoration of the Birth of Prophet Mohamed, Day of Commemoration of the Maldives converting to Islam, Independence Day, National Day, First Day of Ramazan, Day of Eid‐ul‐Fitr, Victory Day, Republic Day, Hajj Day and Day of Eid‐ul‐Ad’ha;”

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers’_Day http://minivannews.com/news-in-brief/may-1-designated-a-public-holiday-to-mark-labour-day-19395

 http://www.miadhu.com/2011/04/local-news/labour-day-may-1-to-be-public-holiday-in-the-maldives/

 http://www.presidencymaldives.gov.mv/Index.aspx?lid=11&dcid=7288

 http://www.sun.mv/17869

 DO

Should we quit the Commonwealth?

This is a question which was raised in our Citizen’s Majlis recently in an aimless debate (the kind of useless talk politicians call debates…) which will one way or another way be answered negatively just not to be seen as politically incorrect by both MDP and their adversaries in politics. This was raised because commonwealth is seen to be taking a much uninformed approach to the political developments in the Maldives in the last few months. It seems the commonwealth diplomats were not appropriately briefed on the situation from all perspectives or that they were bombarded with too much info such that they just threw all the info they were given away and googled info the easy way. Googling (or Yahooing for that matter) info this way is prone to error and there should have been no surprise there.

But what are the practical benefits of being in Commonwealth? Here are some tidbits of info we came across along these lines.

“If they get a lot of benefits, and that you’re angry, try to think of it this way:
The Brits conquered their lands, exploited their kids, making them work in mines, killed dissenters, killed their leaders, killed the natives, brought in immigrants from China, made them work at meagre salaries, implemented the divide and rule policy to the detriment of national unity, left during the Japanese occupation, shamelessly came back to claim power after the Japs surrenderred, continued to exploit the economy.. all to satisfy the needs of the Brits during the Industrial Era.. and it lasted for 2 centuries in some countries. In other words, it’s payback time for the Brits!”
link1

“Visits from the Queen, the opportunity to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph, a much better chance of winning a gold medal in the shot put because Russia, Germany and the US don’t compete in the Commonwealth Games…”
Link2

“The Commonwealth doesn’t have too many legal benefits these days, it’s mainly a friendship organization. One benefit is that if you are travelling to a country in which your own country doesn’t have an embassy, you can obtain assistance from the embassy of any commonwealth country…”
Link3

“…Only writers from Commonwealth countries can compete for the Booker Prize which is arguably the most prestigious prize for a single written work (novel) by an author. The Booker prize has the effect of propelling a writer’s career sky high.”
Link4

Saving Pending off’s for vacation

This is probably one situation which has long been resolved in some resorts whist others are still grappling with. From the boss’s perspective if a boss has 5 guys working under him and two guys are scheduled off and another is on vacation, for him that particular day aught to be hard because his team is 3 guys short. It becomes more interesting when team players swap their off days with working days to save pending days to make a short brief vacation back home. But is this justified? According to the law there is no provision for or against employees ‘saving’ days to add to their vacation. (see below) The relevant keyword in the labour law is “An employee required to work normal hours on a public holiday…” so a worker who is scheduled to be off on Friday can work on that day because he is not prohibited by law and the employer is not liable to pay the 1/1/2 day salary either.

O=off

V=vacation

P=present

It’s the productivity silly

Having to work with half the team will be a burden especially in places like kitchen and housekeeping in high occupancy but what matters is the productivity. Even if you have a houseful of over qualified super efficient team full time working like robots, the productivity may not match that of a dedicated happy team’s work. So it aught to be a balance of sticking to the routine and being flexible with pending off days for the workers. What we seem to lack in our in this situation is empathy. Most managers and other bosses get the opportunity to reunite with their family almost every other month so they do not seem to understand the heartache the youthful workers yearn to reunite with the family and friends, sometimes only separated by a few miles away in another island. They psychological affect of (working in resorts) being away from the family for one year can be discerned by the divorce and separation statistics for Maldives which only compares to the United States. The highest percentage of local workers are employed in tourism and this could be one factor which tears families apart.

Relevant clauses in labour law

Working on a public holiday

38. An employee required to work normal hours on a public holiday shall be paid at least an amount equivalent to half of the minimum wages earned on a normal day of work in addition to over time.

41(3) the employee shall be entitled to an extra day of leave for every working day in the normal course of events which is declared a public holiday while the employee is on annual leave.

41(e) The employer shall not give the employee salary in lieu of any leave entitled to an employee pursuant to Section 39 of this Act, except in the circumstances specified in sub-section c

(c) Any unused annual leave entitlement for which the employee has not been paid by the employer shall be paid to the employee prior to dismissal from employment.

We owe Palestine an apology

And now its a good time to say sorry to President Abbas while he is here:

We earned this debt by running away from the successful UNESCO membership vote for Palestine. The administration at the time gave many explanations as to why the Maldives delegation left in a hurry but none looks convincing.
Here are some official reasons given by various govt officials at the time.

“… Our ambassador [Ibthisham Adam] is based in Geneva. She couldn’t immediately travel to Paris because it was informed of short notice,”

“They were travelling on a UNESCO ticket and they had difficulties in extending their stay, besides Education Minister had to attend a [parliamentary] committee meeting the next day,”

“Maldives delegation who participated at the UNESCO meeting in Paris missed the opportunity to cast the vote because of an oversight. They did not check about the vote to the extent they should, what happened is regrettable.”

What is important is probably not the excuses but the way we failed to see the need to recognize the legitimate aspiration of an oppressed country. Palestine needs all the diplomatic support it can get to help build the Palestine state. However we have gone out of our way to embarrass the Palestinian people and Maldivians alike to shake hands with Israel which does not need any more diplomatic endorsements to continue oppression of a people. It already has the eyes and ears of the biggest military and economic powers of the world and an amazing historical narrative to check any criticism against their state. Theoretically anybody can criticize any country or any people or any religion of the world in a free democracy society. However you risk being blamed for being insensitive to a tragedy if you criticized Israel. Write an essay, or compose a poem, you won’t escape the label. Nobody is immune from this threat. Even world class penmen who thought they could getaway with a few truthful words as their last drop of ink would not survive a jab at this larger than life state.

This was perhaps one of the biggest diplomatic blunders Maldives was involved in hopefully will never be repeated.

Tsunami watch update:

An earthquake with an initial magnitude of 8.6 has struck under the sea off Indonesia’s northern Aceh province.

The quake triggered a tsunami warning across the Indian Ocean region.

The PacificTsunamiWarningCenter said it was not yet known whether a tsunami had been generated, but advised authorities to “take appropriate action”.

Small tremors felt in Male’ and some govt offices evacuated:

Dhiraagu mobile network is down.

Tide is high at the moment and if tsunami was generated it would be expected at 1711 local time near Male’ area and 1637 local time near Addu.

Some local councils making the problem worse by asking people to vacate their homes despite there being no warning yet.

Resorts requiring staff and guest to wear life jackets and supplying vessels with emergency supplies to use incase.

As per emergency policy, Resorts planning to shutdown power stations, boilers as a precautionary measure about the time a tsunami might reach the shores.