Islands given away to corruption on a massive scale. MMPRC case file released by ACC

After months of public pressure, the Anti Corruption Commission released the 700 page report on the biggest corruption case in Maldives history. The report contains the companies, individuals and businesses who were involved in the corruption and the implications are mind boggling.

The money siphoned off from lease of islands and lagoons worth over 70 million dollars was used for everything including dollar to rufiya conversion, buying businesses, and even to oust 2 of the 7 supreme Court judges. The primary suspects of the grand corruption case involve former president Abdulla Yameen, former vice president Ahmed Adheeb among others. Adheeb is currently serving a sentence in jail and Yameen has been summoned to court for a first hearing of the money laundering case.

https://twitter.com/avasmv/status/1096106059012263936?s=19

However there are many concerns that the report itself is incomplete and released too early possibly to cover up some still hidden public officials. These include the Anti Corruption Commission members themselves as well as central bank former governer and current staff and Bank of Maldives officials. The report also contains little to no information about transactions where cash was involved and where islands titles were changed hands.

https://twitter.com/Aniya_A/status/1096076516612435968?s=19

However it’s encouraging that the government took action against a minister and deputy minister for being recipients of money from the notorious case.

To prevent further grand corruptions, it’s important to go to the bottom of this case and other similar cases like this and also to rethink the whole system to rid the possibility of corruption and misuse of public funds.

Link to report:

https://t.co/8fQIYvYCot‎

https://twitter.com/avasmv/status/1096106059012263936?s=19

https://twitter.com/1onlinemv/status/1095989273952546816?s=19

Introducing fb community page Maldivessc

Recently a fellow resort worker applied to a job in a big brand resort and was well into the process of the interviews untill he asked an innocuous question. He asked how much can he expect as monthly service charge. His interviewer was not impressed. The interviewer refused to disclose any amount be it maximum, minimum or even average. The interview faltered from this point onwards and our friend resort worker didnt win the job.

This is clearly an extremely stupid position held by the resort unaware of how much information about resorts is already out there by excellent collaboration of resort workers.

Inttoducing facebook community page

https://www.facebook.com/MaldivesSC/

and accompanying site

http://www.maldivessc.wordpress.com

is a must visit resource for resort workers looking to understand the kind of service charge the resort pays.

Different resorts charge different rates from guests per room night as well as other sales items and services, so there is legit reason for big variation in service charge. However if the variation is big between almost similar sized resorts, there is benefit in being in the know.

Service charge rankings by resort

Chavel Blanc Randheli leads all resorts in Maldives in service charge payments. This trend has been ongoing for quite sometime and it looks like bigger brands with new hotels will dominate this in the future. However with many new big brand resorts scheduled to open in near future, some quite close to Male, change is expected. Service charge is a legal right of employees in Maldives under local labour laws and yet majority of resorts are said to distribute only a fraction of SC to staff. While some resorts do display service charge revenue to staff on regular basis on public noticeboards, most keep this information a tightly guarded secret. With little accountability in tourism sector towards employees rights, it is hoped that various awards and recognition bodies will prod the employers on issues like this to bring conpliance and integrity to tourism sector.

Is King Salman really buying an atoll in Maldives?

The short answer is sort of yes. The atoll in question is Faafu which is a sparsely populated atoll with lots of beautiful islands.  Total population of Faafu atoll is around 5000 will in all likelihood will be resettled in  Hulhumale under the proposed deal. The deal is rumored to be worth 10 billion and the atoll will be reclaimed and enlarged to build a mega tourist city. The rationale for the business idea around the project involves Saudi’s desire to diversify economic interests to counter whatever may appear after demand for  fossil fuel becomes low. 

In all likelihood the deal is likely to proceed with current government having super majority in parliament, significant control in judiciary, curbs on media and doing their 100% to stay credible after huge corruption scandal which landed the vice president Adheeb in jail.In president Yameen’s estimate this deal if sealed will produce same amount of revenue for the country as that of the whole tourism sector.

And then there is also significant opposition to the deal from opposition political parties who are also suffering the blame for voting for a bill in parliament which paved the way for private ownership of land in Maldives. 

For the average citizens this just political posturing as there is little difference between 99 year long term lease of islands and outright buying of the islands. Given the average life span of a Maldivian being 77 years, its very unlikely a Maldivian who lives today will see the day when existing long term leased islands lease expires. 

The only real danger Maldivians will face with selling islands may not be that one day all the islands will be bought by billionaires but that these deals will be tainted with corruption and invaluable pieces of beauty will be sold for knockdown prices. Maldives is already reeling from the biggest corruption scandal in history with the same administration in power. Several islands,  lagoons and sandbanks were traded unashamedly by corrupt politicians and things got so bad that tourism ministry even announced any party who have purchased any island or lagoon to get in contact with the ministry with proof of purchase to register the transaction! The corruption saga was never fully inspected and case looks all but closed after jailing 4 individuals including former vice president.

The business case for developing a huge resort island might be sound but the Saudi’s will be well advised not to alienate the opposition who might be not very cooperative if the current regime fails to win the election in 2018. The opposition lacks funding, clear sense of direction and leadership. The current regime almost lacks legitimacy and trust. Trust will never be won with money or power.

Why not give discounted room rates to individual customers rather than to Tour Operators? To make them fat?

 

Guests want to book their holidays with the resort; resort wants guests to book directly with them.

But resorts give discounted wholesale rate to tour operators but not to individual guests despite wanting them as direct booked guests. What cooks?

Here is the everyday situation in resorts that shouldn’t have been in the first place. After seeing a gorgeous picture (something like the picture below) of the perfect blue sky and an even perfect white beach, the would be guest hurriedly tries to book a romantic getaway to Maldives with a life partner. Searching through google brings the guest tons of ads almost all leading them to a booking site. The booking site happily lets the would be guest click through a few times on the webpage and sends confirmation email with travel itinerary and a welcome email for holiday package worth sometimes a little over 5k$ for a week’s stay in one of the most beautiful islands in the world. The customer is indeed set back that many dollars from his net worth for this effortless business created by a third-party booking site. The hotel gets a slice of the pie as well as the booking site and sometimes a few other partners all enjoy a slice of the pie. This is standard proven business model right?

Actually this maybe the wrong model but the one working model customer has no option but to comply with.  Tour operation is effortless big business which should belong to history. At least that’s what it should be considering Maldives is one of the safest destinations in the world, together with good internet coverage and this being 2017; in theory a customer shall be able to deal directly with hotel to book his stay without intermediaries. But why are guests still paying the (evil) middle man? The answer is actually funny and kind of depressing.  Resorts give discounted wholesale rates to tour operators with the assurance that tour operators will do the marketing work and send guests to the resort in off-season. Its outsourcing their most important department (marketing) and doing business the effortless way.

Marketing in most resorts in Maldives is less about marketing than dealing with outsourced marketing firms and tour operators. Tour operation is so widespread that there are tour agencies who do not market at all, but sell packages to other tour operators from discounted packages they get from resorts. What all this does is add bloat to the customer’s holiday package from which only a small portion is received at the resort. This is one reason vacation packages in Maldives are pricy compared to some similar destinations. On the other side it’s also important to keep prices artificially high to appeal to the wealthy customers for “exclusivity effect”.  This is also mostly true of big brand resorts while average resorts are happy with their island being self- marketed by natural beauty and word of mouth type marketing.

Strike action in Hulhule Island Hotel over discrimination

Vaguthu reports about the ongoing strike action in Hulhule Island hotel.

The local staff of the hotel are on strike about dissatisfaction with management for not being paid the salary in US dollars and asking for a raise.

HIH is operated by a joint venture company with 35% share of sats (Singapore) and 65% share of MACL (Maldives).

According to Vaguthu report, 80 of the 90 local staff are on strike. The local workers demands are actually very simple considering the fact the hotel gets all its revenue in US dollars. The local staff are actually asking for a portion of their salary to be paid in dollars; not even the whole amount. The expat staff are being paid in dollars by HIH and the resort recently increased the pay of expat staff following the recently implemented law on remittance fee for foreign workers in the country. The local workers are citing this as discriminatory as many new taxes were implemented for the local population and they did not get a raise to cover these by the hotel.

Another concern raised by the workers is that almost all the position of management of HIH are filled by expat workers and the hotel offers very little opportunities for local talent.

Tourist arrivals increasing

Its good news for all the resort owners and workers alike. Tourists are again finding Maldives attractive and are filling the resorts in good numbers. According to stats from Tourism Ministry, average occupancy in resorts now is above 70% with 3.6% increase over same period from last year. The increase from last month was 11.4% compared to last year same period.

Most Visitors by nationality:

1. England +11.7
2. Italy +10.2
3. Germany +2.2
4. France -3.2
5. China -10.6
6. Russia +4.4
7. India +45

From the stats its apparent that the Chinese market is dwindling because of the higher rates at this time of the year. A surprising increase is from India, which may well be caused by popularity among wealthy Bollywood celebrities visiting Maldives.

According to tourism ministry stats, there are 110 resorts operating in Maldives with occupancy average of 74%. Average stay duration for tourist is 5.6 nights.

 

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

Striking thoughts… (Add yours below)

A strike in its abstract sense is an amazing social organism. It has its own heart and beat, and most likely will be  unpredictable. Nor will its goals be clear or targets definite.

It could be like fire,

mist or snow

or anything for that matter

(forgive the poetic part)

but its hard to define. 🙂

At least that’s the sort of past 45 or so strikes that has happened in various resorts in the country to various degrees. But of course there are rules to follow. TEAM (tourism employees association of Maldives) is forever at pains to stress this point that employees shall always play by the rules. But who is TEAM when the employees rights are in jeopardy? Its like the perpetual battle between the parents and the children. The children puts on tantrums, win or loose their cause and ultimately falls to the protective umbrella of family. Likewise, even though most resort employees are not paying members of TEAM, they are always ready to help when an employee is thrown out of a resort for a strike. Anyways…

Incomplete info, or superiors deliberately raising workers expectations such as that of a yearly bonus or the next month’s service charge to motivate the team for a full season etc, are all fine ingredients for a destructive strike. The potent wisdom in this situation is to deliver as much was promised. The language barrier is also another factor which contributes a lot to misunderstandings which develops in to full scale riots.

The perception that others are crooks (especially the accountants) have connotation with the ghastly belief that ghosts predominantly live in dirty places such as cesspool etc! But objectively thinking, one can can arrive at the absurdity as to why ghosts shall live in such places when we loath such places. So it could be our conscience or the inverse of that function that makes us believe that only we are clean and others are dirty. This is not about exonerating the class of people called accountants but it won’t harm to be a little generous as to believe that people can actually be honest.

And then there are the leaders. Some lead not by knowing they are leaders but it takes others to realize who is leading whom in a strike situation. In a basic primitive sense, a leader must have strong vocals chords to be able to lead the sheep over the din of dissenting voices. In this situation the leader needs not to have coherent ideas or grand plans, but a high decibel voice to command and shout back at dissent. Its not about answering point by point, but rather thwart discussion by noise!

The utility of having a docile spokesperson to liaise with the management or owners is a very prominent need for a runaway strike as its leaders use such a person for such use!

Arriving at the value of a withheld service charge or a defrauded bonus in a resort situation is a possibility if people are willing to use their brains. A resort works like a clock with many cogs and wheels turning in their routines. Each cog and wheel is bound by its design parameters (in this case things like confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement etc). However short of stealing company’s data to justify a strike, employees can achieve the same result like by following the narrative of the three blind folks who tried to describe the elephant! Forgive the round about way we describe this but, each was wrong individually but collectively they were able to describe the thing they never saw! Likewise, a simple collaborative spreadsheet model (on Excel for eg) could provide some limits to what can be expected for a given period of time, with such and such occupancy, room rates etc. But where is the utility of going through all this when we have a better hunch? But then again, is a hunch good enough when enough is not enough? 🙂

V. Thinadhoo: a tourism success story untold!

The tiny island of Vaavu Thinadhoo is a tourism success story untold. This is an island of about 30  people (official census 55 as per isles.gov.mv) and two guest houses. The guests live freely among locals and there is mutual love and respect on both sides. Most of the tourists that comes to the island are repeat guests who would not need any invitation to join dinner or lunch  in any house. The island provides guest with a real living adventurous version of holiday typical resorts do not provide to their guests. However the resort is for the traveller type of guests who would love fishing, snorkelling, playing chess with local elders, playing soccer with locals etc….

The idea of tourism in the island occurred to a local of the island and his Italian wife ( the island  medic),  both of them are well loved and respected by guests and islanders alike.  It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to create a fantastic tourism product from scratch and to keep up with guests every expectations continuously day in day out. Bravo to  Ellisa and Mongi for a job  well done and we wish them success.

Govt mulling prohibition

In an apparent swipe against the ‘mega demo’ on last Friday, the govt announced that its mulling plans to ban import of alcohol and pork. The govt’s spin doctors apparently advised the administration to put a bill through parliament to ban these products and let the MPs do the debates on the issue to point out the unworkable nature of the big-demo demands.
However the way the govt seems to approach these demands is growlingly seen as insincere and half thought-out, provoking interesting discussions across media.
The big demo’s  list of demands were

1. To forbid the sale of wine and pork and not to designate areas in inhibited islands as ‘UN-inhibited islands’ which is the only way now to be able to operate a bar in an inhibited island as the existing rules prohibit sale of liquor in inhabited islands
2. To remove the controversial monuments in Addu after the SAARC summit.
3. To apologize for Ms. Pilley’s remarks about religion
4. To revoke the decision to allow Israeli airliner  El Al to operate to Maldives.
5. To close massage parlors in Male’ most  of which are places for prostitution.

our analysis of the big-demo’s demands:

•  Sale of wine is prohibited for Muslims and a Muslim administration cannot charge royalties, apply fees and issue license etc for forbidden goods. Therefore one workable solution to this problem would be to outsource licensing and regulating of these items to a competent non-Muslim entity. As for pork we understand that several resorts actually do not import this item at all and do not even have standard permits for import of this item. Resorts run by Villa, Jresorts, and Waheedudheen are all doing fine without this item. Import duty on this item can also be waived and import and regulation can also be outsourced.
• The monuments have done lots of political damage to MDP and also there is no denying the fact that issue has been politicized beyond repair. So it needs to go and the sooner its removed the better for everyone.
• Apologizing for Ms Pilley’s remarks by the administration or by the  president is neither politically tenable nor beneficial since it wont change the facts. There is also some fact that most of what she has said, has been taken out of context and bloated for political reasons.
• The call to revoke decision to  grant operating license to Israeli airliner El Al has merits  on moral grounds as Israel continues to defy international opinion on working to establish peace in the region. This is nothing new and many countries and organizations do boycott of Israel in this line of thinking. In our situation we can afford to do this boycott because of our small size but most western countries cannot afford to confront this issue for historic reasons as well as the threat of being ostracized by the powerful pro-Zionist media .
• The big demo demand  to ban massage parlors in inhabited islands was in fact a call to ban places of prostitution which goes by  names such as massage parlors and beauty saloons etc. It definitely does not involve high end spas managed and run by resorts and its unfortunate that tourism ministry ordered to close spas at Paradise and Villa group’s resorts.

 

Paradise accused of prostitution

Villa group's Flyme airline grounded

In an evolving political dispute heating up between the ruling MDP and the opposition coalition, the latest victims seems to be Villa Group of hotels and their own airline Flyme. Apparently responding to calls to close down  prostitution centres  in the big demonstration held on Friday, the administration responded by sending police and tourism officials to Paradise island to check on the spas in the island. Embroiling in an increasingly political battle, the tourism ministry sent orders to close the spa operation in Villa’s 5 resorts which the resort politely declined citing legal inconsistencies. Villa’s own Flyme airline which ferries tourists and locals to the area around Maamigili island airport has also been grounded yesterday by order from civil aviation authority citing safety concerns. This is in contrast to the fact that other local airlines have never been similarly grounded following major incidents.

Its unfortunate that political scores are being settled against critical infrastructure and tourism facilities which are the mainstay of economy of the country. It is in the interest of the country to keep tourism industry in firm stable footing and to insulate the industry from  political infighting as  tourism industry is critical for the economy.

working against our own interests

It cannot be the greatest sign of wisdom, but we as a country seem forever locked in a battle with ourselves to undermine and work against our own interests, and its paying dividends!

Here is how.
Historically we had the same kind of opportunity as Singapore to benefit from association with the British when they operated a military base in Gan during the second world war period. However our elitist politicians at the time were too busy undermining own interests to get any real benefit from the friendship of a great nation. Even at that time, the executive office in Male’ was obsessed with creating the personal cult of the great dear leader type of drama which benefited none except the dear leader of the time himself. That was during our second president’s time and he is erroneously reported to have brought independence to our country! The fact was that our independence was not lost during that time and only that we had an agreement with the British that we would consult with them on international diplomatic relations which is only fair when Britain had committed to protect the country from any occupying power. Had we done any better instead of putting up a drama with the UK (for domestic audience) we would have been able to get more development to the country.

Our first 3 president’s terms were definitely wasted creating personality cults and into the 1st period of the 4th (current) president, we are witnessing another drama, this time with the limits of freedom, unbridled democracy and experimenting with media power. In the last eventful 4 years we have successfully started the divisive dialogue of religion (to our detriment), started to build the welfare state paid for by an introduction of taxes (to our credit), and generally started a major overhaul of the whole system the country is working on. We have even given a free-reign to media which is understandable as media played a very important role in demolishing the personality cult hyperbole created by former leaders.

This is all good but racing at top speed to reach the all important party manifesto goals in 2013 could be counter productive in the long term. We should slow down and take a more cautious approach because what took us forever to build cannot be rebuild from scratch again in 5 years time.

China could have done the same to Hong Kong when the mainland got Hong Kong from British but chose not to meddle with a good working economy the British left and they are reaping benefits from their decision, keeping everything stable and cautiously asserting their authority.

The effects of our race against time to do everything the democratic and modern-day values way is evident from the bad press and negative perception we are getting everyday thanks to our runaway media and populist politics. Even today in the high tourism season we have travel advisory caution against us by UK which no doubt will be followed by other countries.

Finally.. to cut the long story short:

• we shall stop the circus about free media and take a more realistic view of news and readership. Media can make or break us so we shall check it if it undermines out top product which is tourism
•   We shall be able to stop the gang warfare,  daylight robbery, mugging in the 2sq kilo meter island Male’ and stop playing democracy and indecisiveness to criminality.
• We shall check the divisive debate on religion because we can ill afford to have the Pandora’s box and keep up with the consequences.

Ayada Maldives opens

Ayada Maldives

The latest resort to join the resort list opens quietly on 30th September and the resort looks absolutely stunning. The resort is quite far from Male’ but is actually another addition to growing  tourism in the south.

The specialty about the resort will be its Turkish theme in services and concept, such as the Hammam (steam bath), the Turkish hookahs (smoking water pipes) etc.

Here are some quick facts about the resort.

• distance: 268 miles south of the capital Male
• size: 150,000 square metres
• number of rooms: The 112-villa
• 33 Beach Villas,
  4 Beach Suites,
  14 Sunset Beach Suites,
  33 Ocean Villas,
  11 Sunset Lagoon Suites,
  16 Sunset Ocean Suites
  1 duplex Ayada Royal Ocean Suite.
• seven restaurants
• an extensive 3500 sqm AySpa
• Health Club managed by ESPA
• dive and water-sports centre
• kid’s club.
• investment: $110 million
• proposed number of staff: 350
• rooms price range: 1300$ to 10000$

links:
http://www.asiatraveltips.com/news11/3110-AyadaMaldives.shtml

http://maldives.net.mv/3689/ayada-maldives-resort-opens/

http://ayadamaldives.com/

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkish-firm-to-open-luxury-hotel-in-the-maldives-2011-07-25

 

Maldives tourism rebranded

It used to be the sunny side of life and now its always natural. Not that it used to be unnatural bytheway :).

old sunny-side-of-life logo

The brand change has been on official minds for quite some time and the first slogan that came to mind was “value for money”. As soon as our tourism minister, Dr. Zulfa came with this idea, it was torpedoed by various big-shots of tourism industry across the board, as the slogan seems to down-sell our tourism product. Since then, the search for a better slogan and logo had gone on and ultimately the winning slogan and logo was conjured up by a ‘QUO KEEN’ of Bangkok and London’.

the new always natural logo

Re-branding is the creation of a new name, term, symbol, design, or a combination of them for an established brand with the intention of developing a differentiated (new) position in the mind of stakeholders and competitors. Re-branding could be done for various reasons such as the need to shed a negative image,or to differentiate from competitors. In our case, its more like that somebody somewhere up in the ministry just got bored at staring up at the old sunny side of Maldives logo and vowed to change it at whatever costs! Anyways, the final product is good and thanks to wherever it is due. However we would like to note that our key tourism indicators still look good and keeps getting better.

Below is a comparison of key tourism indicators as a percentage over 2010. The only indicator that has gone south is the average stay duration which could account for the Chinese tourists who opt for shorter stays.

key tourism indicators of 2011

Ps: A heated thread in Minivan on this issue provides a lot of background on the issue.

Laamu Asseyri given to JResorts

proposed design of the Asseyri Project

Laamu Asseyri project could be the next best thing to come to Maldives tourism. Asseyri (or Beach) project was thought up to cater for the growing calls to start mid-market tourism in the country. Tourism experts have called for such a concept for a long time. With the new Assyri concept, guest rooms will be built on the western beach side of Laamu Gan on approximately 25 acres of land. There will be two resorts with 300 beds each, 79 guest houses and recreational facilities.

location of Asseyri highlighed in red

The selling point for new Asseyri based tourism will be to be able to give lower room rates than conventional resort islands which is perfectly feasible as existing resort islands operate at very high profit margins.

However the concept does not seem to have generated a lot of interests and only 3 parties are known to have proposed bids to build the facilities. The winning bidder is JResorts which is already struggling with a string of undeveloped islands and barely managing to keep afloat their only running resort at Alidhoo. However there is still potential for this idea as Laamu area is being expanded for tourism.

Laamu Gan Asseyri project

Alidhoo staff on strike, again!

Alidhoo (Cinnamon Island)

We are getting reports that a strike is happening at Alidhoo Cinnamon Island over last month’s pay. Apparently the resort has still not paid August month’s pay to the staff and is not even able to tell the staff when the resort can pay them. The same situation was repeated in June when staff had to go on strike to get their pay! That time the resort fired 12 staff for their legitimate demand on pay.

Chairman of Yacht Tours Jabir with his wifeDhiyana former AG

Under the labour laws of the country, every employer is required to pay the previous month’s salary no later than the 10th of the next month. Cinnamon Island resort which is owned and managed by JResorts Maldives (formerly Yacht Tours Maldives) has a history of abusing workers rights and flout labour laws without fear of reprisal. The managing director of the company happens to be a senior member of the ruling MDP and a former parliamentarian whose wife is the current SAARC secretary general. It is scandalous that such high profile persons can afford to openly flout laws of the country with impunity.

We call on the Tourism Ministry and the Human Resources ministry to look in to the recurring problem of delays on staff’s monthly pay at resorts managed by JResorts and to bring those responsible to justice.

The skilled 8.5k

Under the economics reform agenda, it was decided that 8500 people will be trained in various areas of study in work related fields to combat widespread unemployment among young people. According to the plan there will be 56 areas of study for study which will certify the participants in 1 to 6 month duration courses some of which will be accredited internationally.

According to latest statistics of HRM, there are 2000 vacancies in construction industry, >3000 vacancies in tourism industry, 700 vacancies in transport industry and 800 vacancies in fisheries industry.

Out of 205033 locals eligible for work, 38602 are out of work whilst another 73840 expatriates works in different sectors throughout the country.

In theory this is alright, jobs are there lying vacant unmatched to prospective job-seekers. Job seekers also would have to be helped to become skilled if they are not. But the real problem that 30% of people eligible to work who remain unemployed is because of unrealistically low wages. Consider the picture below.

The picture is a typical job ad by a top local business brand which clearly is seen offering an unreasonably low pay for a demanding job. As for skills required, fiber optic networking could not be attempted without skills. Yet a lousy 3k per month is offered for full time employment which actually means, the employer is not interested in hiring locals. A local simply cannot survive on that kind of pay in Male’ island if he does not live in a hole or a cave or needs to eat and drink water even if occasionally!
Job ads like these are clearly designed to exclude locals from work and is all the more reason why we shall have a basic minimum wage and other protective measures like work visa quotas. Ideally a country would be left better off not having to legislate on issues like this, but if employers do not take the social responsibility then they shall be prompted to. Its also worth noting that the worst offenders when it comes to dodging social responsibility are the local employers who still have pre-slave era beliefs about the worker class.

What is so indigeneous about it?

Most resorts would love to develop their own style of everything to identify their uniqueness among the crowded uniformity as a selling point to the guests. To prove their point of uniqueness they go to great lengths, sometimes extending the very core values they try to preach. Basically the marketing crew will do anything to develop the unique signature of resort as their work progresses. So its a constant evolvement of ideas and practices which makes up the story of a typical resort.
However there are the atypical bunch to prove the opposite!There are some resorts which are year around booked whole time with repeater guests sometimes more than 3 months in advance. Mostly these would be club style small resorts whose guests fell in love with the resort because of its unpretentiousness. These resorts indeed do not have a long narrative about their philosophy, core values and bla bla and sell the real deal to the guests without the proverbial ado. That is the guest would know what to expect and is generally gets better value for their money.

Resorts run by big brands know that they would need to keep their clients in a  bubble so that they can charge higher rates for their stay. So basically a lot of things are invented to keep the guest in the imaginary state! For example a resort may need to create an artificial greeting in the local language just to impress the guest with their ‘groundedness’! Guests sometimes cringe uncomfortably in self-consciousness when staff pour rose petals practically at their feet as they walk the pier to reception on their arrival. Guests would duly be told and expected to understand that this is local culture while its in fact nothing of the sort. Arrival fanfare is another exercise which is duly forged to impress guests with the originality of the resort. While its true that there was a local tradition to beat drums to welcome dignitaries and elders from neighboring islands, such drums would generally be lively and not solemn at all.

Its the irony of resort life that you have to create dis-ingenuity to make  money and keep the guests in an imaginary bubble, preach to the staff about how moral our resort is and how unpretentious we aught to be etc.

Useless trainings…

Trainings come in various sizes and shapes! Mostly if a resort employs an in-house trainer he or she will make sure that a project is always going on even if its of use to no one. These trainings goes by various names. It could be about ‘brand orientation’ or ‘company philosophy’ or ‘green globe -whatever’ etc.. Sometimes outside parties such as marketers of a brand or a product might be invited to the resort to lecture a section or a department to introduce their products, all in the guise of a training. Basically these trainings are created and implemented so that the trainer wants to be seen to be doing some work!

The worst part of a useless training would be to be expected to learn some archaic abstract meaning of the shape of the company logo or the personal history of the humble beginnings of the company. For example, For The Taj Group it will be long long story of how the British were in India, The East India company, the Rajs of the time and inevitably the freedom struggle all somehow related to the company and how the founders toiled hard to please the always-right customer in their small hotel! (And remember, the founder was always smiling! {that’s important}) Similar stories goes for every employer. It maybe a required obsession of the employer to inflate the corporate ego but in this day and time, it might be worthwhile to check the return value of such an exercise. Namely what the resort or company gets by forcing uninterested employees the intricacies of their humble beginnings except wasted hours and soft-drinks and T-shirts etc.
If all in-house trainers in every resort acts up like this, its a little solace that similar schemes are not thought of by in-house resort doctors who might come-up with ideas to vaccinate staff routinely on various imaginary ailments!