President Faure to chair meeting of cabinet committees every Monday |05 January 2018

As from this year, President Danny Faure will chair a cabinet committees’ meeting every Monday afternoon with a group of ministers, their principal secretaries, advisors, technicians to address cross-sectorial issues to help the executives with its planning and to set the direction and agenda for legislations for the year.

The idea is to have another forum where everybody listens to the other’s ideas for a better work plan and efficiency.

The cabinet committees’ meeting will be an add-on to the normal cabinet meetings held every two weeks.

A forthcoming quarterly press conference by each minister, just like the one held by President Faure to all media houses, is also in the pipeline and details on when will this begin will be made available soon.

This was announced yesterday by Mohamed Afif, Cabinet Secretary in the Office of the President, in the conference room of State House annex, when giving details to the press on the deliberations of the first cabinet meeting for 2018 held on Wednesday during which a number of legal and policy decisions were taken.

Alongside Mr Afif were Margaret Pillay, the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Policy Affairs, and Johnny Bastienne, Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Legal and Institutional Affairs.

Cabinet meetings are normally used as a platform to set directions in terms of policy and President Faure always stresses on the need for the executive to come closer to the public by listening to the people, communicating better, delivering as a government on what they say they are going to do, taking brave decisions for the betterment of the country, doing what is right for the country and remaining a government that is transparent and accountable.

“These are the principles on which we are going to work on in 2018. We need to communicate better. We have to listen to the public and respond to their concerns. The government has to be able to deliver on its programmes planned for this year. It has to take decisions based on the correct information with the aim of doing what is good and right for this country, while emphasising on transparency, accountability and good governance by all in the executive,” he said.

Elaborating on the number of decisions taken during Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, Mr Afif and his team shed more light on the various issues raised like the executive priorities for this year, the migration of the Harmonised Commodity Description System from version 2007 to 2017, the National Strategic Planning Policy framework exercise within ministries, departments and agencies, policy to safeguard the privacy of children in homes in the media, national policy statements for aquaculture, competition to name newly constructed roads and Nature Reserves and Conservancy Bill, among others.

On the priorities of the executive for this year, Ms Pillay said each ministry has its mandate, departments and affiliated agencies that work with them.

“So their priorities remain their individual mandates. But what came out of Wednesday’s cabinet meeting was that we need to have actions on decisions taken. We have to decide. We cannot delay on taking decisions. We have a concern, the public, client have a concern, we have to see them and discuss it and take decisions,” said Ms Pillay.

“If ministries need support from higher up, Ms Pillay said, they have to seek it for actions to be taken sooner.

A second priority, she said, is communication on what is happening, decisions taken and programmes being implemented in government.

As for strategic planning, Ms Pillay said for an organisation to function properly, strategic planning is very important for direction or goal. And the government launched itself in a process to make sure all ministries, departments, agencies have a strategic plan which feeds in sector plans. For example health is a sector, therefore there is a plan for it where affiliated ministries or departments can feed in that sector through their organisations. The department of strategic planning is mandated to oversee the National Strategic Plan.

“The department updated the cabinet on what is happening in that area. We noted there were ministries or departments that are still lagging behind. The new deadline is end of February where all plans should be submitted,” said Ms Pillay.

Speaking about safeguarding the privacy of children from homes in the media, Ms Pillay referred to the Children’s Act which she says protects children.

“It’s about the portrayal of children in media like in clips, printed or broadcast media, on television, in social media, websites… etc. Parents who live with their children can decide if their children can take part in such activities. But this policy applies for children living in homes which fall under the social affairs department,” she explained.

As those children have not given their consent to use their photos in any medium, Ms Pillay said, this could damage their life, reputation, integrity. Therefore, this policy is to protect those children by guiding the user on how to present, portray that photo taken of that child. The Ministry of Family Affairs will give more explanations on this subject soon.

On the Harmonised Commodity Description System from version 2007 to 2017, Mr Bastienne said it is about the creation of new trade descriptions for certain goods which will allow the Seychelles Energy Commission to introduce standards under which environmentally-friendly and energy efficient appliances will qualify for Value Added Tax (Vat) exemptions.

Regarding the competition to name newly constructed roads, Ms Pillay said this is again aimed at getting public involvement in the process instead of decisions taken from top down.

The next cabinet meeting has been scheduled for January 17, 2018.