Preparing For Ramazan

As we come go nearer to the beginning of Ramazan everyone is looking forward to the so called “holy” month. Most households make extensive preparations for the month in advance. Keeping in mind that Ramazan is a month of fasting (ie keeping away from food) and spirituality, let’s see just a few of the things being done in this regard:

• Buy a new oven/ cooker/ cake mixer
• Buy a new refrigerator
• Buy new pots/ pans/ plates
• Buy new recipe books
• Set aside money for daily watermelon and other unique and expensive foods
• Businesses import new and more luxurious goods
• Buy a new television to watch the interesting programs aired especially in Ramazan
• Television channels produce video songs, dramas and game shows to be aired only during Ramazan
• Plan entertaining ways to spend the day such as new video games and board games
• Download movies to watch
• Plan fun ways to spend the nights such as fishing trips or arrange to break the fast at a party on a safari boat miles away from any mosques

How about instead we:

• Buy new clothes to wear during prayer, new Namaadhu dholhi or Thaakiha
• Download religious programs to notify of prayer times, islamic lectures to listen to and videos to watch
• Buy a new hathim
• Make plans to go to all the prayers and to read Quran between the two evening prayers
• Learn new duas and supplications to make after praying
• Plan to watch only religious programs on TV channels and keep the TV off at all other times when they show dancing and other worldly entertainment
• Plan to do all the rakats of the tharaveeh prayer
• Learn to do the night prayer and do it every night

What else?

The Latest Solution

The Situation:

• Despite millions spent in the reclamation and development of Hulhumaale with the ruse that it will be a solution to the housing problem in Male’ the rent in Male’ keeps going up
• Due to printing of large amounts of currency by the Government, inflation in the country is on the rise
• Due to limitation of dollar sales by the banks, businesses are forced to buy dollars in the black market leading to rising prices of all imported goods
• The country and the world is still reeling under a global economic crisis

The Solution:

• Cut the salaries of all government employees without compensation or provision for reduction of apartment rents in Male’. And don’t even give a few months notice before hand so that the majority of middle class families living in the capital who pay over 50-80%% of their income to rent can plan for it by finding alternate sources of income. No, just nonchalantly announce that salaries will be reduces next month.

Haveeru News article on the announcement of reduction of salaries of civil servents

Faisal Seed’s Disappointment

Hey, remember when Dr. Faisal Saeed made posters against Maumoon cos Maumoon wasn’t paying him enough for a full days work? I suppose Dr. Faisal had the illusion (and delusion) that a Nadheed lead govt would treat doctors and other educated people in the country with fairness and equality or even a little respect. So the blatant discrimination of the Maldivian doctors by his Hero must have come as quite a shock for poor little Dr. Faisal. Dr. Faisal must be feeling like a right fool now eh? If he’s not then he aught to be.

Infact now he’s out making posters on how disappointed he is with President Nasheed’s so called ‘New Maldives’. I guess he should have listened to the 60% of the Maldivian population who did not want Nasheed in Office in the first place.

So now he finds that

The government is heavier at the top than before, basic rights of people are being denied, the Civil Service Commission is doing whatever it wants, and the president is too busy campaigning to win a majority at the Majlis, which is highly suspicious.

It is surprising that the current government is discouraging demonstrations and even allowing the Civil Service Commission and the Human Rights Commission to threaten those who protest. I hope that fear and demoralization of the public will not be the policy of this government.

So like a whole lot of other people in the country, Dr. Faisal is also starting to realize that it’s more of the same shit as before, just by different people. The fact that you are surprised is evidence of how shallow and blind your understanding is of political realities. And there are thousands of people in Maldives right now who would say “I told you so”.  And why would fear and demoralization not be the policy of this government when those have been the fundamental pillars of their political campaign from the beginning?

Maldives To Get Greener

There is a lot of persuasion or even pressure for countries to adopt greener energies like solar power. Most of these so called ‘green energy’ is very inefficient. It will take a lot of solar panels to power a Maldivian home which typically have air conditioners, washing machines, microwave/electric ovens, fans, TVs and computers at the least. There are also some kitchen appliances which are not used regularly like grinders that need a lot of power. To meet this power demand using solar or wind power will be difficult and might not even be feasible. 

Therefore in order to manage a house with these green energies we would have to change our lifestyles to consume less energy. We will have to learn to live without these luxuries that we have gotten used to. No more air conditionars for sure. No using the computer while someone else is watching TV. Want to use the waching machine or the microwave? Then swith off all the fans and lights in the house. 

Are we seriously to believe that Maldives as a country is prepared to make these sacrifices? Did the President even ask around if such a move will be generally accepted and adopted? Or are these sacrifices to be made just by people in the distant atolls and the capital Male’ going to be an exception as usual? Just like how he made big plans of making Maldivian schools teach in one session and then found out it’s not actually feasible so decided to do it in the other atolls and make Male’ an exception. When is Nasheed going to start thinking things through and doing some feasibility studies before opening his mouth.

Why is it that it’s the smaller or poorer countries that have to adopt these expensive and inefficient technologies to save the world while the bigger and richer countries who are actually doing the polluting can continue to use the old technologies? Shouldn’t it be them setting an example to us rather than the other way around?

Speaking of expense, I wonder if Nasheed has actually tried to balance the budget while spending an estimated $110 million a year on making this transition. And keep in mind that even while building the new infrastructure Maldives will still have to be powered using the current systems. I suppose he’s imagening that western countries are going to pour aid money into the project since it’s going to ’save the world’. But in todays economic crisis when Maldives is having to cut down salaries of doctors to balance the budget, I wonder if we will get that aid. And if Nasheed isn’t even sure where he’s going to get the money, doesn’t this amount to making empty promises to win the upcoming parliamentary elections? Gasp! Isn’t that the same thing Maumoon used to do? Gasp! So what the hell is different in this New Maldives? It’s the same shit. Just different people.

State Of The Women

So a couple of days ago it was Women’s Day and there was a lot of propaganda in the media highlighting the supposed encouragement and importance the current administration gives to women in the country. According to the politicians, women working and earning is one of the pillars of a happy and successful family.

In fact this pillar is so important that the administration had sidelined all the other pillars of a happy and successful family by making the women stay in office two to three hours more instead of being able to go home and spend time with their family. And anyone who says that a women can go home and make lunch and have it with her family in a one hour lunch break obviously has never actually had to make lunch in their lives. 

There is so much about this administration that’s fucked up that it’s hard to stay focused on one issue at a time. But let me get to the point I set out to make in the beginning. So to mark the Women’s Day these politicians came on TV and said their shit about how suportive they are of working women in the country. But when the hundeds of nurses at IGMH went to them begging for equal and fair treatment in their salary scheme, they were told to fuck off and quit and they were assured that if they quit, the administration can get better nurses. This is the actual level of importance this administration gives to working women in this country.

The Sick Doctors At IGMH

I guess the hottest news of the week is the “strike” by the doctors at IGMH. Of course technically it’s not a strike because they just took sick leave and officially they are only on sick leave. In fact some of the doctors who had patients admitted in the wards under their care actually went to review them despite being on sick leave (I guess doctors do care about their patients after all!).

I think by definition an employee strike would involve some kind of public demand and an official acknowledgement that they are going on strike inoder to put pressure for their demands to be met. This has not been done in this case. And of course the whole thing has been turned into a real circus by the government and the doctors themselves, but more on that later.

Taking a look at the reactions on MVBlogs, Alidi who claims to have “unbiased thoughts” fails to realise that government has been anything but unbiased and fair to the doctors and nurses at IGMH. Here is my comment on that post:

“doctors are doing humanitarian work. Even not getting a penny, will get people and God love if assist with patients.” Can you show me one shop owner who will give these doctors a half kilo of rice for free every day as a token of appreciation for their so called Humanitarian work? Or do you think doctors are super humans who do not have to eat or pay rent or send their children to school?

Think about the nation first? Despite the whole world economy going into a recession the government is going around raising everyone’s salaries except doctors who actually got a pay cut. I am sure you would call that fair. Isn’t it our elected leaders who should first have the sense to run this country properly and practice fairness?

Everyone else gets pay rises but it’s just the doctors who have to get happiness by having no desire for happiness.

The only way to stop the Maldives budget from deteriorating is to cut the pay from doctors even while everyone else gets pay rises is it?

The doctors are not complaining about not getting a pay rise. They are complaining about them being treated unfairly. As we can see how much you can understand that concept from your one sided shallow appreciation of the situation.

If you can’t look at the reality or at least be fair and truthful in your analysis of things that are apparently beyond you, at least keep your thoughts to yourself.

The maldiveseconomist says that one doctor at least will be going home with a pay cut of Rf 3000. In fact some of the doctors will be deprived of upto Rf 6000 or more. I wish you would realise that the doctors and nurses are unhappy not because they want to get a pay rise but becuase they have been treated unfairly. And here we were all fooled into thinking that the new government is going to be more competent and fair to the people. It’s funny that on the TVM newscast they said that it’s the normal people who go to IGMH (aka patients) who have to suffer from this unfair action by the doctors. Aren’t doctors people too? What makes them abnormal or supernormal? Is it because they spent a decade of their lives studying while everyone else did not or is it because they have dedicated their professional lives to helping make other people’s lives healthier? Is this the gratitude we have to show to them; that they should get the same salary as someone who dropped out of grade 9?

In that case why should the ministers get a higher salary than the local garbageman? They both seem to have the same depth of knowledge and common sense from the shit that happens in the Parliament.

aliflaamgaaf thinks that the government should start telling the truth to the people. Hmm.. I do remember some bull shit rhetoric from MDP about their planned government having accountability and transparency. I guess in the 100 days of the news management we have taken a ferry back from the New Maldives to the Old Maldives cos we are getting fucked the same way as we were before.

If you’re still reading this I am glad there are still some people left on MVBlogs who have got the patience to read through a post that’s more than 50 words long. Just to finish off I have to touch on a recurring theme of mine; the stupid ass journalists. If the civil service officials are going to hold a news conference to talk about the doctors strike, why can’t one of you get some hard facts and ask some tough questions? Why can’t you go prepared with the facts and make the officials accountabel instead of being pussy pushovers and letting them turn the event into a sarcasmfest? If you take just two values:

1- The pay rise of a typical deputy director
2- The change in pay of a typical specialist doctor

And ask them to explain why the former got a rise of thousands and the latter got a pay cut of thousands, and ask them to explain the difference in treatment, maybe you can get some answers and do your part in this “supposed modern democracy” with a “supposed free press”. But as usual you were all drowsy after your heavy lunches.

And if only the doctors would give this hard information to the journalists so that maybe, hopefully they will raise this issue with a bit more force.

The Gaza Crisis – How To Help

Got this in a Forwarded email. Personally I think the services of the Bank Of Maldives is just a hair above being pathetic and can be made much better with very little effort. Although this thing seems like a BoM advert, the VISA capability of their Debit card can in fact be used to make donations online.

We as Maldivians and Muslims are collectively sympathizing with the people of Palestine in this time of crisis. We are collectively deploring the actions of Israel and looking on helplessly and in sorrow at all the lives lost. We are actively and aggressively forwarding links to news items on the net and emailing pictures of dead and wounded children to express our outrage.

Is there more we can do about this than merely cursing and raving against the Israeli? Is there more we can do than clicking a few times on the Forward button from the comforts of our air conditioned Offices and rooms?

Perhaps if we could suffer for a day without cigarettes and coffee breaks, we could send the money saved as a small donation towards the relief efforts being undertaken by the Red Cross organizations or the United Nations in Gaza.

And No, not having a Credit Card is no longer an excuse. The VISA Debit Card of the Bank Of Maldives would be enough. And if you don’t have the VISA Debit Card, and if you really want to take some action to help those suffering in this crisis, it’s not too late to get off your ass and go get it so that you can make the donation as soon as possible.

We push our parents to buy us toys and gadgets and luxury foods like Pizzas and burgers. Why not push them to make a small donation to Palestine? Why not get each one of your friends with a VISA Debit Card to make a small donation? Why not open a pool in the office and collect money?

When a country is in as a dire state as Palestine, even the smallest individual donation can make a huge difference. And if 5,000 of us sent just $10 per person, think of all the food and medical supplies that can be supplied to the people of Palestine.

You can donate directly to the Palestine Red Crescent Society; go here and follow instructions:
http://www.palestinercs.org/Donate_online.aspx

Make donations to the direct efforts of the United Nations in Gaza here:
http://www.un.org/unrwa/emergency/donation/emergency_activities.html

You can make donations to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement here:
http://donate.ifrc.org/

You can make donations to the American Red Cross here:
http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main&s_subsrc=RCO_RedTab&s_src=DRF

Don’t forget to share and forward this to your friends so they can do their part in helping our brothers and sisters in Islam in Palestine.

May God shower his mercy and blessings on us all.