Memories from a UNDP trip

Shakeeba Ali, 27, from the impoverished island of Sh. Narudhoo and her 3 children aged between 3-8 do not eat the occasional bunch of banana they get from the ‘keyo feeni’ in their backyard. The good loins from the skipjack tuna Ahmed Adam’s cousin’s boat catches depending on the season also does not form a part of the diet of Ahmed Adam, 38, from Sh. Feydhoo and his family of 5 children and his wife. Only the fish head, badaidhoo, kashifathi and other parts of the fish that has zero commercial value goes into their pot of garudhiya. I wondered why. Our government supported by organizations such as UNDP among others, have been urging our people to eat good food for ages. How could these islanders still continue to be so ignorant and not heed to the good advice given to them?

I asked both Shakeeba and Ahmed why they have opted not to eat the finest food they have access to. That’s not because I didn’t know the answer. I only wanted to confirm something I had always known - the few bunches of bananas and smoked tuna loins contribute substantially to the little income they have and with that meager income they both needed to buy rice, flour and sugar.

Both Shakeeba and Ahmed have been living a life of sustenance just like the way their people had lived for generations. They had few complaints. They seem generally content with their life. They don’t have to think about the upcoming refinancing for their resort from their Singapore based banker. They dont either have to think about concocting their next big lie needed for the upcoming Majlis session. They even don’t have think about ‘child malnutrition’, ‘poverty alleviation’ and ‘Gini coefficient’ and other difficult to pronounce and abstruse terms that our government officials and donor agencies seem to understand like the back of their hands. Happy people they are.

On vilivaru and Biyadhoo...

Hiriga (Haveeru Online 18th October 2007) is absolutely right about Vilivaru and Biyadhoo. You and I didn’t go to Lincoln’s Inn. But we also know that our government has absolutely no legal basis for deciding to compensate Yacht Tours Maldives (no ill-will intended to the company or its owners) simply because the government’s team in its report concluded the company ‘had an opportunity to win the bid’. Hiriga has done a marvelous job with presenting his arguments on the case very succinctly. So, I’m not doing that.

If ‘opportunity to win the bid’ really is a basis for a sovereign government to compensate one of the richest companies in its country then I can’t think of anything more outlandish than that. To add to the pain is also the fact that this decision comes at a time when the government is stretched to the limit in the management of its public finances. You might say that I'm exaggerating if I say that our central bank and Finance ministry are bordering on bankruptcy but please see MMA’s monthly stats. So, this decision defies all logic, reason, moral and ethical standards.

Sigh!! I’m not running our government. So, I obviously can’t do anything about it. But I wish instead of compensating Yacht Tours, our government had decided to compensate:

• The 10,000 odd people who are registered on Municipality ‘dhaftharu’ who had waited several years for a place to live.
• The thousands of people who are forced to live like packed sardines in matchbox sized rooms in Male.
• The thousands of 'rajjetherey' people who migrated to Male in search of emplyment, education and basis health services. They've been paying the riculously exorbitant Male rents with their arms and legs for years.
• The hundreds of people who 3 years after the tsunami are still living in ‘vaguthee hiya’
• The 30 odd thousand civil servants for the meager wages they had received for several years.
• The several thousand people in outer islands for having to live without access to proper healthcare, education, housing and a means to generate any income at all.