Good afternoon,
It is of course a very happy day for us. We have been working on a proper relationship between a good Indian health institution and the Ministry of Health in the Maldives. All throughout the last year we have gone through the tendering processes, we have gone thought the request for proposals, we have gone though the expression of interests and that process had actually taken so long, at times I was wondering if the process was overtaking substance. So finally, I decided that what we are seeking for is substance and not the process. So very often in bureaucracy and in government, we seem to think that the process is more important than the substance. The substance is we want to deliver good healthcare for the people - affordable good health care for the people. How we go about doing it finally cannot be as important as actually delivering the substance. So I called up Dr Aminath Jameel and I asked our good friend Ms Reddy: can we lock both sides in a room until they come with a white smoke, until we have an agreement. So we did that for the last more than 24 hours actually, and finally it has been fruitful. We have white smoke. We have an agreement.
I am so glad. I am so thankful to Madam Reddy. I am thankful for Dr Aminath Jameel also Aminath Jameel’s Deputy Minister of Sate for Heath Mr Baree, the Chief Executive Officer of IGMH and in no small measure to our Minister of State for Finance Assad and also our officials from the Economic Ministry. They have been imaginative enough to come up with models – the financial structures – on how we maybe able to have a proper agreement, a proper understanding.
I am sure this is just the beginning. There is much more to come. We have now concluded to this day a public private partnership with an education institution in India, who is now running one of our schools, one of our big government schools. We also now have a health institution who would now be managing our central hospital in the capital Male’. We will soon hopefully be signing an agreement with TATA housing on building homes in the Maldives. As the Ambassador pointed out, good heath, good education and a roof over your head – that’s good living and that is what we are endeavoring, we are trying to deliver to our people.
It has been one year since we assumed our government and throughout this one year we have actually been under some pressure to deliver. But I have been talking about the process of delivering to being over taking the substance.
I am so happy that substance has won today. I am so happy that we have an agreement and an understanding.
Thank you very much, everyone.
