The Actor
Guess who!
Tip 1: He decides everything at the last minute, therefore needs a fast car like an Aston Martin. (Just see what will happen with the CT power contract because the deadline is 21st January 2008.)
Tip 2: A sage said of him: ‘Quand li pas dans la maison, li dan avion, sinon li lors télévision.’
Tip 3: He is the only person in Mauritius who can research his Indian roots at the cost of public pockets and still not have the MRA disallowing the expenses.
Well friends, time up but you must have got it right! You know who it is by now.
The Juggler
When he starts to juggle with figures, catch him in his act if you can!
He has out juggled many of the PhD and other Masters of Finance so much so that they now tell you that money that is theirs is really not theirs and qualifies to be called FDI.
We are not that naughty, so we also need to say he has democratized our economy. He has effectively cut the tax contribution to Government of major multi-million companies and opened the door for several thousand citizens to pay more taxes via License fees, penalties, Residential Tax and Income Tax.
A weak rupee, a low dollar and strong Euros and Pounds Sterling make him happy, just see his face when the rupee stabilises and the Dollar, Euro and Pound all dive together!
The Fill-a-Post (hope it is not ‘poche’ like one of his predecessors)
We have a guy who we call in Creole a “figurant’. He has qualifications on paper but is non-existent in practice.
He is the guy who went to sleep like sleeping beauty when we had the Chikungunya epidemic and lost us all our chances of compensation from the country responsible for our outbreak. He also mismanaged the crisis and several Mauritians lost life and limb because of him and his staff. We would like to know when did the Australian Mauritians who got Chikungunya visit the country. The news from Australia in early January 2008 is that people returning from Mauritius had caught the illness and had signs of it in their blood tests..
Was it in the period the Ministry claimed the country was ‘Chikun free’ just because there were barriers for those who wanted the blood test done?
He has done the same crime against the Country by allowing HIV drug use and AIDS to increase by more than 200% within the last 2 1/2years. Guess who will pay for that sort of negligence!
The same guy allows several thousand cake sellers to work without a Health Certificate so he can fill up his Hospitals with people suffering from food poisoning. If you do not believe it, then go and check the cake and dholl puri sellers at Rose Hill Bus Station. Practically none of them have permits!
Under his Ministership, we had major cases of export of fake drugs from Mauritius and some of the medicine was even used in local Hospitals!
The Land Monger
There is a guy who could claim to have brains as thick as his glasses. He talked to a person more than 23 times on the phone and exchanged SMS’s about meetings and other businesses, yet he says he only vaguely remembers that same person as a guest at a dinner! Strange, when he is the person who went on a ‘site visit’ at 6 in the morning in the South of Mauritius!
He also declared in January 2007 on TV that he had brought together people from all 20 constituencies to distribute their roof slab money … Quel faux pas! Luckily ICAC was not watching TV that day.
There was even one of the beneficiaries “screened’ by his Ministry who said on TV he would use the money to plaster his walls, since he had already cast the roof slab!
His same Ministry has allowed a private firm (of private friends?) to occupy Government land worth 10 million rupees for private purposes. The rent will also be probably minimal. Sorry, but the people of the Solitude area will have to do without a Sports Centre!
For good friends of the people above near Triolet, he has allowed reconversion and compensation at astronomical rates of land acquired by Government. He has agreed to pay even more than the sum claimed by the Legal Representative of the owners!
Talk of generosity with Government tax money!
In French: “Le planteur qui s’est planté, ou plutôt qui sait se planter”.
If you ever hear of a person who shoots himself in the foot, then this is your guy. He is given responsibility of reforms in the sugar sector and manages absolutely nothing in two years! He did not even have the incentive to copy the VRS plans of Pravind Jugnauth.
In the end, it is the Prime Minister who heeded the warnings of Pravind and made a last minute agreement which still give billions of gifts to the so-called sugar barons.
Same story for the Pig Pest illness. His department misdiagnosed the illness and our country has lost its pig industry. Several months later he still has not got a master plan for restructuring the industry!
Same story in the Beef Industry, where people can no longer afford fresh meat due to price increases.
We had hefty price increases last time he was in Agriculture, from Rs 5.50 to Rs 7-8 before being removed in 2000.
It is always in his presence and presidency that the prices of local foods like onions and potatoes shoot up. I say shoot because the increase is of the order of doubling prices! Potatoes at more than Rs 12 and Onions at more than Rs 18 per half kilo.
Do not think that fish, which is also in his department, is less affected! The fish of Rs 19 is now at 36-40 Rs per half kilo!