President Reaffirms Government Commitment to Facilitate Attractive, Alternative Employment Opportunities for Civil Servants

President Mohamed Nasheed, in his radio address today, has reiterated the government's commitment to facilitate more attractive, alternative employment opportunities for civil servants and government employees.

Speaking on the Cabinet's decision last week to launch an incentive scheme to encourage voluntary redundancy for government employees, he said the government's aim was to provide alternative, more attractive opportunities to civil servants to improve their living standard.

He added the government wanted to aid civil servants build own businesses by providing finance through the government's small and medium enterprises loan scheme.

The incentive scheme announced by the government last week include financial assistance along with priority in government's SME loan scheme, and training and scholarship programmes.

In his radio address today, the President implied the need to trim down the public sector employment to build a stronger economy.

“Limiting the number of public sector employees to spend a certain proportion of the country's income [on their wage] is necessary to sustain a strong economy and monetary system,” he said.

He said “if a larger proportion of the national income is spent on recurrent expenditure, development opportunities will be limited.”

The President said the best way to build a stronger economy was to achieve a significant growth in national income.

However, he said this was still likely to take longer despite having made significant strides towards increasing state revenue this year compared to 3 – 4 years before that.

He said the country needed to increase its national income by two folds to overcome the deficit and added:

“It is crucial to reduce the government's recurrent expenditure to get there.”

In his radio address, the President also spoke on his weekly visits to islands following the election of local councils.

He said he was encouraged by the cooperative spirit and the examples of working in a plural political system shown by the councils.

The President concluded his 94th weekly radio address, urging people to use the much awaited rain that came with the beginning of southwest monsoon to green the islands.

He especially asked the people to plant trees, during this rainy season, to green newly reclaimed land in many islands.