SLA celebrates 35th anniversary, rewards long serving employees | 09 September 2019

Long serving staff Beltanne Maria (second left) and Lisette Boniface (right) join Messrs Pool and Woodcock to cut the anniversary cake

The Seychelles Licensing Authority has turned 35 and to commemorate this milestone event, management, board members and staff of the authority joined together on Saturday evening at the Harbour Café to celebrate and reward long serving employees.

Among the 33 members of staff rewarded that night, Flavia Contoret clocked 33 years of service but unfortunately she could not be present at the ceremony. Two of her colleagues followed closely and they are Beltanne Maria with 32 years of service and Lisette Boniface with 30 years of service.

Sharing her joy with Seychelles NATION, Ms Maria said she is happy and grateful for all the opportunities she got while working with the Seychelles Licensing Authority (SLA).

“I started my career in 1987 as a clerk. It was my first job and I am still employed with the SLA. I never wanted to change my job and I dedicated all my life to the authority. In 32 years, I have achieved quite a lot. I have attended many training courses offered by the authority. I have also had the opportunity to help other people,” she recounted proudly.

Ms Maria pointed out that like in all organisations, there are ups and downs in her work.

“But you should never let these ups and downs distract you and interfere with your work. You have to persevere and keep improving yourself to do your work better,” she stressed.

“Now that we are celebrating our 35th birthday, all of us employees of the SLA should keep striving to do our work better in order to foster good and friendly working relations with the public that we serve. We always have to make our clients happy as they need us and the economy needs them,” Ms Maria pointed out.

Commenting on the current general negative attitude towards work, Ms Maria admitted that there are nowadays many challenges that impact on the work environment but she added that some young people instead of dealing with those head on, they instead prefer to move to other jobs. She noted that this type of attitude will bring no benefit to them.

“I encourage the youth to make use of the opportunities already available to them and work for their own personal development and growth and not for friends or anybody else. They have to be productive and my advice to the young generation is to stay in their jobs or start a business but do not stay idle or fall into bad habits. Now, I am a licensing officer at Providence and happily married with two children who are young adults and are both in employment,” Ms Maria noted.

SLA chief executive André Pool, board chairman Lambert Woodcock and the deputy chief executive   Jessica Larue all graced the event during which the longest serving staff were recognised and rewarded.

Addressing the gathering during the event, Mr Pool thanked all the people who worked within the organisation before and talked about the mandate of the SLA which is to ease businesses’ socio-economic development through issuing and enforcement of the Licences Act and Licence Regulations and to create the enabling environment for sustainable business development in Seychelles.

“The organisation has accomplished a lot during the last 35 years, but we still have room for improvement. Since my arrival we have reviewed the structure and the scheme of service as well as created new positions to better serve the public. We also have a legal service to attend to our queries. The public is satisfied with the current service we are offering and we will still work towards becoming more efficient. SLA has its own website and currently we are working in close collaboration with the department of information communications technology to see how to make these services available online if it’s viable,” Mr Pool explained.

He concluded his remarks by wishing the staff well and called on them to keep working hard to better serve their clients.

Mr Woodcock, for his part, noted that when the new board was appointed in 2017, they identified many issues that needed immediate attention to make the service more efficient.

“There is still work to be done and the staff is benefitting from training so they are happier. We thank you all for your devotion and we count on your support to keep raising the standard of SLA,” said Mr Woodcock.

During the evening, employees from five to 33 years of service were awarded with a certificate. The official part of the celebration ended up with a song describing the various phases of changes within the organisation composed by the staff for this special occasion.