GET A GRIP ON IT GUYS!
Seychellois await with bated breath for the best way forward
ALMOST two months after our island brothers in the Caribbean started putting their heads together to find the best post-Covid way forward, via a Zoom conference, Seychelles is still scrambling trying to find its new directions.
The high level cross-sector meetings at State House have not produced anything concrete yet by way of a strategy.
We’ve been invited to a presentation next week by the President’s Office on the Financial and Economic “outlook”, which we already know is grim.The Seychelles Chamber of Commerce and Industry SCCI has been sending out questionnaires asking for ideas and has come up with some of its own ideas.
The National Assembly has been trying to cobble up some attempts at gathering discussions and conversations, while debating their own operational guidelines and work ethics.And the Ministry of Finance for its part has been neck-deep in the process of making and adjusting payments for disenfranchised companies and workers and has not provided much leadership in a post-Covid strategy.
Meanwhile the Central Bank Governor, a steady hand at the helm in these stormy waters, has been dishing out cautions and trying to get banks to be kind and understanding to financially stressed individuals and companies.In the midst of this apparent disarray we’re facing mounting figures or redundancies and unemployment, whilst the Ministry of Employment and SETS try to grapple with how to re-train, re-skill and reorientate workers.
We need some clarity. We need some great ideas.The behaviour of the Covid virus may be uncertain and unpredictable, but we already know we’re heading into a depression, possibly bigger than the one in the early part of the last century.And we owe it to this young generation who are growing up in the time of war.
