Monday, March 31, 2008

Health care for citizens before medical tourism

The Minister of Tourism Dr. Mahmoud Shaugy wants to introduce medical tourism in Maldives for foreign tourists.

Before our government ventures out to provide medical tourism to foreign tourists, they should introduce health care to all citizens. We should consider health care models like the health care in Canada that is funded and delivered through a publicly funded health care system or a Universal health care program in which health care costs are met by the population via compulsory health insurance or taxation, or a combination of both.

An interesting article on Healthcare Economist gives an analysis of Singapore's Health Care System. Read it here.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus one of the pioneers of the microcredit industry and the founder of the Grameen Bank, gave his comments on health care at the World Health Care Congress Europe 2007.

When Dr. Yunus was questioned as to whether or not poor individuals in Bangladesh should have to pay for health care, he replied: “I think it’s very important to have the patients, the people who are asking for health services, to pay. How that payment will be made…it can be in a variety of ways. But the important thing is they must pay. They must feel that this is a service they are buying so that they feel equal, so they don’t feel small.”

Dr. Yunus later states that payment for medical services can be made in a variety of ways. Of course, there are cash payments, but individuals also can pay by taking out a loan or making incremental payments, or purchasing health insurance in anticipation of the possibility of sickness or individuals could even pay in kind if they have little cash.

The Maldivian Government must learn from economists like Dr. Mohammad Yunus and introduce a health care program for all citizens.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Everyone is entitled to a good standard of living

Maldives has come a long way from being a number of sleepy islands depending of subsistence fishing for their livelihood. Thanks to foreign tourism, Maldives is today ranked the highest in per capita income in the region.

But the higher standard of living enjoyed by the elites in Male' is drawing sharp contrast to the majority of the population who struggle at the bottom of the economic ladder.

This year, we are facing the first multi-party contest for the nation's presidency and there is no shortage of criticism on the Government and its failed policies that has led to such lop sided development for the people in the islands while the elites in the capital Male' flourish with increasing opportunities.

A glaring example of wasteful expenditure is the over 100 million Rufiyaa allegedly spent on STELCO building in Male'. Is it really necessary to provide one of the most expensive public buildings in Male' to house the staff of the government utility company whose job is to provide electricity to the public at the lowest rates? These incidents should be raised in public debates with presidential contenders to seek their views on how they would spend government revenue raised through tourism taxes ,various duties, etc. Will they concentrate only on developing Male' or do they have the political will to impose income tax and corporate tax and reduce the growing income gap between the rich and poor?

Election campaigns are the only time that presidential contenders will have to to run after the public promising everything in order to get their votes.

While there are no quick fixes that can solve our problems, providing meaningful and easily accessible information to the public can help to create solutions to improve the quality of public service. Hence we must urge the presidential contenders and policymakers for greater transparency and timely information. A free press can play an important role to educate the public who can ultimately hold the government accountable.


"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. "- Erich Fromm

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." Thomas Jefferson

Monday, March 24, 2008

Politicial parties should offer their policies

Maldives has world-class tourist resorts to cater to rich foreign tourists and drive the GDP higher leaving a huge gap between the elites and the majority who can barely meet ends. The presidential contenders vying for the top post are promising to unlock the people from an unjust system and bring the necessary changes to create a just and humane society.

The politicians have turned Maldives into a banana republic through their ineptitude and hypocrisy. Legislators and public officials are conveniently serving their own self interest without any conscience. The public loathe the top politicians many of whom have turned into scoundrels who have abandoned reason and have no regard to public interest.

Soon every one will realise that just by changing a constitution and electing a new presidential form of government, nothing changes. Our political parties are playing the same old politics. They quibble with words and are deceitful in their stated intentions. An understandably sceptical public believes that their only real goal is to stay in power or to grab power.

Every one knows what the nation's problems are. 1 in 3 is a drug addict, we don't have health care for our citizens, crime is rampant, there is gang violence in the streets of Male', the majority of the youth remain unemployed and the general public has turned sceptical because of failed promises of reform and change.

If the past has taught us anything, it is time that we realise that we must stand up and declare that our narcissistic politicians are not interested to seek answers to solve our social problems. We should demand what we want from those seeking public office.

In this election year we need to ask the presidential contenders some important questions.

1)A responsible government must protect the interest of every one and not just the elites in Male'. Candidates should declare their position on this and advise how they will protect the interest of the common man?

2)Affordable high quality education must be provided to all students.

3)The government must provide proper health care and equal opportunity to all.

4) There should justice for all, not just only for the rich and powerful as has been happening up to now.

During their campaigns, presidential contenders should offer their policies and discuss in detail how they wish to look after public interest, provide high standards of education, provide equal opportunities and justice for all. Campaigns should not be about empty promises to deceive the public or to buy their votes without any intention for real change.

Friday, March 21, 2008

The power of simplicity


A Google employee rides a bicycle by a sign at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Google has improved its green credentials by offering all of its employees a free bike to ride to work. Photograph: Gareth Davies/Getty Images.

Google, the company that was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University valued at US$23 billion based on its initial public offering which took place on place on August 19, 2004 is turning to the power of simplicity to enhance its competetive advantage.

Marissa Mayer, a US computer scientist and Google manager understands the power of that simplicity and is on the forefront introducing features to make their products simple and easy to use.

Read more here.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

A US recession will affect Maldives

Many economists at Harvard, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch believe that the United States is headed for an official recession, usually defined as two straight quarters of declining output.

In an election year, most Americans are worried about the economy, and inflation tops their list of concerns. The Federal Reserve bank, the US central bank is moving swiftly to contain a deepening credit crisis and is acting on its role as the lender of last resort to restore confidence for Wall Street investment houses that can begin securing short-term emergency loans.

The Fed acted just after JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy rival Bear Stearns Cos. for $236.2 million in a deal that represents a stunning collapse for one of the world's largest and most venerable investment houses. Just on Friday the Fed had raced to provide emergency financing to cash-strapped Bear Stearns through JPMorgan.

JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay a mere $2 a share to buy all of Bear — which a little over a year ago was trading for as high as $170 a share. This shows how swiftly and dramatically events can turn around in the stock market.

US is the world's largest economy and the expected negative impact on the US economy will have adverse effect on the global economy as well. The adverse impact on global economies will affect Maldives as well.

Maldives is also going through an election year and as the our economy is heavily dependent on tourism which accounts for 30 per cent of our GDP, and we need to follow the recessionary pressures that will impact global markets.

The rising sea levels has a lasting impact on our future, but the increasing oil prices has an immediate impact on us as our economy is vulnerable to rising oil prices much more than any other in the Asia Pacific region, according to a UN report.

Current crude oil prices which have crossed $110 a barrel are nearly 10 times the levels less than a decade ago. Presently Maldives is subsidising oil to fisherman, an unsustainable trend if our economy suffers a downturn due to global events. While oil-rich nations can enjoy historic gains and opportunities, major oil importers — including China and India, home to a third of the world’s population — are faced with rising economic and social costs. Maldives heavily dependent on oil imports needs to get back on fiscal discipline and run a balanced economy.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned Maldives against money printing and dangers of a currency collapse when the country went for a record budget deficit in 2007. The Maldivian $940 million budget for 2008, equal to eighty percent of the Maldives’ expected GDP carries risks of a significant deficit based on “optimistic revenue assumptions, which may fail to materialise given any decline in global markets.

Our government needs to shift the focus from political bickering and get down to the business of managing the economy on realistic expectations in these turbulent times.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Arrange safety awareness to protect Maldivians as well

A training program to provide safety awareness for tour guides is going on in Maldives conducted jointly by the Police Academy and Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviations. The one week awareness program has 26 participants with Police personnel and experts from other Government offices giving expert advice.

This is a good effort needed to provide information to tour guides about protecting the rights of tourists visiting Maldives. Since 30 per cent of our GDP comes from the tourists who visit our sunny side, we must do all we can to keep them happy so that they will spread the word of our excellent service and make return trips too.

The same enthusiasm needs to be provided to protect the rights of Maldivians in different fields. More public safety safety programs should be conducted to protect Maldivians so that that we don't have incidents such as the five young men who died in a Municipality fish market well due to inhaling toxic gas . The presence of such deadly gas was alerted by the Food and Drug Authority to Municipality who repudiate that claim. In another incident last week, in a crime of passion a former boyfriend killed a 17-year old girl in what appears to be a love feud. The 24-year old boy who knifed the girl to death is reported to have tried to commit suicide earlier without success. The young man in question clearly has some mental problem and it is worrying that in a small island of 600 people, those who are responsible to look after the community are unable to provide the kind of care needed.

It is also worrisome that when such tragedies happen, there is no public outrage to at least bring some comfort and justice to the victims families. What kind of a society are we turning out to be?

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Singapore's pioneer civil servant J.Y.Pillay speaks

J.Y. Pillay (b. 30 March 1934, Klang, Malaya) is one of the pioneers who helped build the Singapore economy after its separation from Malaysia in 1965. His single most significant contribution is in building Singapore Airlines (SIA) into a leading world-class carrier. One of the few highest-ranked Civil Service officers (Staff Grade III), he is also known as a visionary and a brilliant bureaucrat.

Pillay had his early education at St John's Institution in Kuala Lumpur. He completed his tertiary education at the University of London's Imperial College of Science and Technology, where he obtained a first class honours in Engineering in 1956. After working in the United Kingdom and Malaya for a few years, he came to Singapore to work in the Ministry of Finance in 1961.

Despite its small size and lacking any natural resources, the success story of this island nation of 4 million people is a remarkable one.

In a series of talks organised by The Straits Times and the EDB Society, Singapore's economic and policy pioneers are talking about their experience. The first two speakers were Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Tamasek Holdings chairman S. Dhanabalan.

Mr. Pillay took centre stage at the Pioneer talks Series dialogue on Monday in the old parliament house.

In the wide-ranging discussion, the private man who rarely gives interviews, touched on his time in the civil service and his move into the private sector.

The former Chairman of SIA also shared candidly his views on how the present generation of Singaporeans could learn from their predecessors in confronting new frontiers.

He said: "You must have guts, a little bit of guts. To me, it hasn't changed from the time of Adam. The environment has changed. So, each generation has to figure out its salvation as it goes along."

Unlike his generation, today's young have not experienced the shock of the Japanese Occupation and other shocks in subsequent decades, said Mr Pillay, who turns 74 on March 30.

'These are the people who should read all these books that are being written on Singapore's history, the past 50 years. Unfortunately, they don't. That's the way with youngsters. They are looking too much to the future - which is good - not so much backward,' he said in response to Straits Times reader Jonathan Chee at the EDB Society-Straits Times Pioneers seminar yesterday.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Public safety should be taken more seriously


The well in the fish market above has claimed the lives of five young Maldivians between the ages of 20 and 24. The Maldives Food and Drug Authority (FDA) says it has warned the Malé Municipality of health and safety risks associated with the well due to excess levels of ammonium gas.

Clearly the well was a death trap. Male Municipality reiterates that they were not informed of the toxic levels of ammonium.

Most Maldivians do not take safety measures very seriously and it is alarming that the government authorities responsible for public safety are taking a callous attitude in discharging their duty as evident in the FDA and Male Municipality response to this tragedy.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Call girl could get 1 million from her infamy

The 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupre who is the call girl hired by the disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer for $1,000-an-hour is reportedly on her way to make tons of money while criminal charges against the former governor are just beginning.

Ashley Dupre a college drop out was an aspiring singer whose turbulent and difficult life led her to prostitution where she found the promise of the good life. Now her songs have become the most popular downloads on a music-sharing Web site. Her songs "What We Want" and "Move Ya Body" are ranked as the two best-selling songs on the AimeStreet.com. A spokesman for Aime Street, which uses a demand-price model where users pay more for popular songs, would not confirm how many times Dupre's songs had been downloaded. But he said "Move ya Body," which was uploaded to the site around 2 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Thursday, rose to the highest download price (98 cents) faster than any other song in the site's history.

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt told the Access Hollywood television program on Friday that he plans to offer Dupre $1 million to pose nude in his magazine.

Earlier in the week, the lawyer for Dupre lashed out at the media for thrusting the young woman into the “public glare” without her consent and publishing revealing photos on the basis of the fair use argument. Her attorney, Don D. Buchwald, said she did not consent to the use of her photos in revealing manner, and the usage may be a violation of federal copyright laws. He said the photos have appeared on commercial Web sites without her consent. Buchwald stopped short of saying Dupre would sue media outlets, but he contended that she is not a public figure and said he would take “all steps that we deem necessary or appropriate to protect Dupre from any unwarranted exploitation of her name, picture, voice or likeness for purposes of profit.”

Dupre's 15 minutes of infamy has risen her to a top star. Hollywood would soon be after her to make a film.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Exposing double standards

New York claims to be the financial capital of the world and its powerful chief executive Governor Eliot Spitzer, 48, whose rise to political power as a fierce enforcer of ethics in public life was undone by revelations of his own involvement with prostitutes, resigned on Wednesday, becoming the first New York governor to leave office amid scandal in nearly a century.

The scion of a wealthy New York real estate baron, Mr. Spitzer graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School before rising to fame as an avenging state attorney general, hunting down Wall Street criminals with an uncompromising fervor. Now the same rules that he imposed on other people are haunting him in his link to a high class prostitution ring with the potential for criminal charges to be levied against him by US attorneys.

Now the media pundits and pop psychologists are searching for an answer why a man who demonstrated an unnerving steeliness for taking on the misconduct of the top Wall Street barons and who had everything going for him, had secretly led such a reckless life, possibly breaking federal laws.

At his Midtown Manhattan office, the governor — with his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, at his side — offered an apology to his family and to the public and said he would devote himself to serving “the common good.”

“From those to whom much is given, much is expected,” Mr. Spitzer said. “I have been given much: the love of my family, the faith and trust of the people of New York and the chance to lead this state. I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me.”

“Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct,” he said. “I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.”

High-end sex market is a growing industry in most global cities, and men from the financial sector are an important part of the clientele. Eliot Spitzer was a former attorney general before he became governor in New York and he knows the rules that have got him into trouble.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

What do we celebrate in our National Day?

Maldives celebrates the first day of the Islamic lunar month of Rabee-al-Awwal as its National Day. This was the day, according to our history, Mohamed Thakurufan of Uteem assassinated Andhiri Andhirin and seized control of Malé.

Who was this Adhiri Adhirin?

In 1558 after the sultan was killed, the Portuguese established a small trading outpost in Maldives, which they administered from their main colony in Goa. It is said that they tried to impose Christianity on the locals. The Portuguese rule only lasted for fifteen years when Mohamed Thakurufan defeated the Portugese regent Adherin Adherin.

In celebrating our National Day, what values are we really celebrating?

We certainly honour the dead heroes who fought for our freedom after years of being enslaved by Andhiri Andhirin. The same value of freedom and justice must be the values that we celebrate if history (even if the story is a myth) is to have any meaning in our daily lives.

In celebrating the National Day, there are few events, either official or unofficial that strike a cord with the younger generation demonstrating the significance of this day. It is turning out to be just another holiday when we escape to the islands or resorts to recharge ourselves from the drudgery of our warped life.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Healthy Chocolate




Check out the healthy chocolate here.

Friday, March 07, 2008

What has driven Maldivian students to Taleban?

As reported on Miadhu, the president of Supreme Council Sheikh Mohamed Rasheed has revealed that there are Maldivians trained in warfare tactics who are fighting alongside Mullah Umar and others with Taliban.

“We have received information that they have studied with the followers of Usama Bin Laden and Mulla Umar and that some are actually working with them. There are many young Maldivians there now” said Sheikh Rasheed.

At what point have Maldivian students in Pakistan turned to Taleban to take up suicide killing and become martyrs? How did this start?

Are Maldivian parents aware that such radicalisation is happening to their children sent to study religion? If this is happening with their consent then we have a huge mountain to climb to defeat radicalism and Sheik Rasheed does not have the capacity to do it. This is a frightening situation.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Criminals devour 2 million daily selling drugs

National Narcotics Control Bureau (NNCB) reports that drug users in Maldives pay RS 2million or more to pursue the deadly habit which is killing one-third of our younger generation while enriching the despicable criminals who indulge in this trade.

The only way to save our younger generation from the scourge of drugs is to enforce death penalty for drug traffickers. Our Government should conduct intense inspections at all entry points into Maldives so that we can stop the inflow of drugs.

Will our Government ever get tough to deal with the criminals trafficking and selling drugs or are we as a nation destined to witness the slow, degrading and painful death of our youngsters?

This is an unbelievable scenario. Maldives is now richer than an LDC country (least developed country as defined by UN) and we are going to allow foreigners to invest in mega projects in this country that will further increase the income gap while the majority of our population are still struggling to meet their daily needs. The illegal drug trade is enriching the criminals and killing those who fall into their trap. Most of the drug users and addicts would not have the kind of money to continue their deadly habit and so it leads to robbery and crime. This has become an epidemic and the whole society is suffering and yet the Government has still not decided to take firm action to put away the traffickers for good, while continuing to provide proper treatment for rehabilitation.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Tragic deaths reflect a bigger problem

Five people between the ages of 20 to 24 from one family in Thaa Diyamigili have died while carrying out some work in the junction at the fish market in Male'.

While every newspaper has carried this tragic news, there are no details of who assigned work to them, under what conditions and what are the safety precautions that should have been taken if such measures are at all followed in Maldives. What the journalists reported is the drama that unfolded following this accident and as in many cases in Maldives the truth will never come out and we will not learn anything from this incident.

I wonder weather this incident will be raised in our parliament.

In their youthful zest and ignorance, some Maldivians risk their lives without taking the basic precautions such as checking the air quality of the junction well or wearing protective goggles before going down the well. As we see in this case, the consequences are fatal. While so much work is going on in Maldives, our Government has not mandated safety for workers and they do not run safety awareness programmes to educate the public.

We have lost our work ethic and our interest is only to make money. Our Government has to show urgency to protect our society and we do not have to wait to lose lives before regulations of safety are enforced.