The Cabinet has today decided to hold the first Community Cabinet meeting in Addu City on 12 May.
On 30 November 2010, the Cabinet decided to introduce Community Cabinet meetings, with the aim of bringing government working closer to the people.
With Community Cabinet meetings, that will enable people to interact directly with the Cabinet, the government believes it will be in a better position to receive public inputs into decision- and policy-making, and understand public concerns on issues.
For the Community Cabinet meetings, Cabinet ministers will travel to islands and hold meetings open for entire island communities in which the meetings are held.
The Community Cabinet meeting to be held in Addu City will be open for the people from Addu City as well as Fuahmulah.
Community Cabinets are forms of community forums held in few other democracies to strengthen government-public relations.
In addition, the Cabinet also decided to establish the National Institute of Sports.
Deliberating on a paper presented by the Ministry of Human Resources, Youth and Sports, the members highlighted the need for a separate sports training and education institute to effectively develop sports in the Maldives, especially with the advancements in the area sports in the country.
Currently, sports training and education programmes are conducted by the Youth and Sports Development Centre in the Ministry of Human Resources, Youth and Sports.
At today’s meeting, members of the Cabinet praised the efforts of the Maldives Inland Revenue Authority (MIRA) to collect outstanding revenue payable to the state.
The Cabinet members noted that a timely recovery of large amounts of money payable to the state, in the form of revenue to the state, would give a considerable boost to the economy.
The Cabinet also discussed the work of the National Crime Prevention Committee and decided to collaborate with the committee to further enhance the work of the Committee to address the serious and organised crime.