It’s been a while since I started maintaining a small personal archive of documents covering key economic areas of the Maldives. One thing I’ve noticed while doing this is that both the sheer number of documents and the depth and breadth of their coverage are quite astounding, to say the least. In fact, I don’t think I’ll be way off-beam to presume that there are probably few other microstates that could come anywhere close to where we are in terms of the sheer number and depth and breadth of coverage of our development plans.
The sad story, though, is that there is no single institution or agency in the Maldives that’s doing anything to keep track of these plans and documents. After having invested many hours to collect such documents, I’m convinced that, with perhaps a few possible exceptions, there is certainly a very comprehensive plan to cover every possible area of socioeconomic management and development in the Maldives – thanks to the umpteen number of TAs we received from our development partners in the last two decades or so. Surprisingly, the existence or whereabouts of these documents, stacked somewhere in the dark silverfish infested shelves of some of government building, collecting dust and spawning termite colonies, are known to few. And more surprising to me is the fact that a large number of these documents and development plans are applicable with only minor alterations even to today’s situation. Today, I skimmed through some of the documents in my small archive. Among the documents I have, I found the following to be particularly interesting.
1. Seventh National Development Plan, Ministry of Planning and National Development, 2006-2010
2. Strategic Economic Plan, Ministry of Planning and National Development, 2005
3. Third Tourism Master Plan, Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, 2007-2011
4. Development of a Framework for Financial Sector Restructuring (ADB-MAL-TA2265)
The Strategic Economic Plan, 2005, developed by the International Trade Institute of Singapore tops my list. A country of our size and stage of development doesn’t need to look beyond this document for development plans. Every development plan that we would need at least for the next two decades or so is elaborated in this document in a very clear cluster based approach.
I have no clue as to why we didn’t we implement these plans. A good friend of mine once shared his explanation on this --- while the silverfishes and termites were busy quite literally building their empires in our development plans, we were busy pretending to be teaching ‘the art of doing nothing’ to foreigners. Unfortunately, we never taught any art to anyone but instead we did quite successfully master ‘the art of doing nothing’.
10 comments:
plans are forumluated for show and publicity, to fool the public and so on. the last thing on thier (whoever) mind is implimentation.
any chance of sharing some of these? esp. the ones u've mentioned here?
naimbe, you are wrong about a lot of these. We did master quite a lot of arts. We mastered the art of paedophilia, the art of drug abuse, the art of senseless political bickering, and of course the the art of false promises.
During the formulation of the plans, stakeholders practiced the fine art of doing nothing. And not without good reasons.
If the plans were so neatly prepared by BFS Consulting, with the best minds of the country, why wouldn't others practice that fine art.
Do you have an e-mail contact?
I don’t know about the art of paedophilia and the other forms of art that you are talking about. But something I can bet anything on is this. We have mastered the art of substance abuse like no other country. Substance abuse for us is now like what wine is to a wine connoisseur. We know the substances, the ingredients, the base, the body of all substances so well. I don’t think there is any other country that has perfected this art so well. It is perfected to such an extent that 10year olds are able to get high on Dunlop adhesives and their mother’s Eau de Cologne bottle.
its all available on the net. just google or go to www.planning.gov.mv
Naimbey. do you know that President Clinton during his visit to Maldives in the aftermath of the tsunami incident said that he was truly impressed with the documentation produced by Maldives government? Im sure Clinton would have no reason to lie about this. He must have gotten really impressed. If we are able to impress him with our document producing abilities we could impress anyone. But what Clinton didnt know is that not even 25 percent of the projects that were very nicely included in the documentation that he saw was subsequently implemented in the country. We have to thank all the doing nothing PhDs and the so called educated people in this country. Its like as if the entire country is on a race to get PhDs. I dunno for what? These people are no good at doing anything. Even after the tsunami all that they did was compile tons and tons of important looking documents. Almost everything that was done, i mean actually implemented were done either by the French Red Cross of the British Red cross. The disaster management centre ended up as the biggest disaster in the history of big disasters the country ever faced.
Didi
anon 9:01 - as anon 7:35 has pointed out 3 of the 4 docs I have listed in my post are available on the internet. If you are interested in any of these or other docs from my small personal archive pls drop me an email.
anon 4:17 - asknaim@gmail.com
smokin monkey - :)
Didi - very true.
This is a case for Auditor General.
Shouldn't he be investigating this when
the people who decided on contracting the plans and those wrote the plans, and who approved the financing of the plans are once and the same....
Post a Comment