Vice-President Meriton holds second quarterly press conference ‘Government working on plans for outer island development’ |21 August 2018

Government is working on plans to attract foreign and local investments for development activities on the outer islands, Vice-President Vincent Meriton has said.

“We know that tourism activities are central in the development plan but other activities such as agriculture and carpentry can complement the tourism activities,” Vice-President Meriton said, noting that some locals have shown interest in agriculture and animal rearing on the outer islands but there has to be a balance between development and conservation of these islands.

“There are some discussions on the development of agriculture as a whole on the outer islands and when all the plans for development of the different islands are finalised, a tender plan will be made available for the different economic sectors to participate,” Vice President Meriton said.   

Vice-President Meriton was speaking during his second quarterly press conference for this year.

The aim of these meetings with the media is to address issues of concern in departments under his ministerial portfolio.

These portfolios include information, ICT (information communications technology), Blue economy, foreign affairs, industries and entrepreneurship development, the civil society and religious affairs and the outer islands.

On the question of better access to fast and high quality information technology, Vice-President Meriton said that the department of information communications technology will soon make announcement on the final discussion and agreement related to the second phase of the sub-internet cable.

“This will again put Seychelles on the world map in communication and information technology. It will allow government sectors, businesses and the private sector and also individuals to use the digital platform to learn and do business, satisfying the expectations and needs of the population,” he said.

On the high internet cost, Vice-President Meriton explained that the best way to cut down cost in modern technology is through competition in the market.  

He said that there is a demand for a new mobile telecom operator to join the business.

But he noted that statistics have shown that the cost per unit in digital technology has gradually gone down.

“What we’ve seen is, with the cost going down, people have realised that they can consume more and there has been a peak increase in consumption in the bandwidth.  Their additional cost is not because of the high cost which statistics have shown has gone down, but rather because of using more units as a result of the lower cost,” Vice-President Meriton said.

He added the government will not intervene but will allow the market, through competition, to determine the cost of digital technology.

Vice-President Meriton further added that consumers must take their service providers to task in cases of receiving bad services.

Digitalising government services is the future plan which Vice-President Meriton said will facilitate the ease of doing business among other services provided to clients.

He added that a household survey on access to internet is being carried out to establish a national internet statistic database for the benefit of both the government and the service providers.

“Government has started tests to digitalise some of its services and we will announce the services that will be on the digital platform that will facilitate our system of governance,” Vice-President Meriton said.

Vice-President Meriton said that DICT is working on measures to safeguard the use of internet in Seychelles.

He noted that by the end of the year, new laws to regulate hackers -- the cyber crimes bill and the telecommunications bill -- will come out to protect business transactions among others and the confidentiality of all users of the internet.

“The case on the leaked documents on Assumption last year is still open and non conclusive as we need to correctly establish the facts and sources before we can go public on the matter,” Vice-President Meriton said.

Last year, a large number of staff left the foreign affairs department for different reasons and the department was on the hunt for qualified personnel with capacities to deliver, to fill vacant posts available locally and internationally.  

Vice-President Meriton said that with work still ongoing to recruit the necessary staff, the department has up to now managed to recruit eighteen new staff with sixteen vacant posts still available.

As for staff recruitment at the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), Vice- President Meriton explained that information on the matter will be released after an audit survey of the corporation has been made.