Archive for November, 2008
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]
Last week, I wrote about how our parliamentarians have yet to embrace the roles and responsibilities which they were elected to perform. Everyone is so intent on getting into government – or staying put, once there – that they ignore most of the political tools available to them.
On Thursday last week, distracted by a looming no-confidence vote, Parliament passed dangerously flawed legislation amending the Employment Act. The changes included improvements in maternity leave, adjustments to employer liability when a staff member resigns on short notice and changes to the way annual leave accrues.
But what got every employer’s knickers in a knot was a change to how severance is handled. The rate of accrual was increased by 300%. Worse, every worker, no matter how short their employment or the circumstances of their departure, is to be eligible.
The outcry was immediate, irate and, occasionally, irrational. Many employers immediately sacked all their staff, paid out whatever severance was due and re-hired everyone, sometimes at reduced rates calculated to discount the increased severance. Others requested that their staff resign, avoiding severance payouts entirely.
Expat workers were needlessly affected. In spite of being ineligible for severance, employment offers were shelved, contractors were shuffled between companies, salaries cut. Businesses closed briefly to process the artificial staff turnovers.
None of this was necessary. Not now at least, and in some cases not ever.
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Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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Friday, November 28th, 2008
I want this as my screensaver.
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Friday, November 28th, 2008
Last week I reported that, in spite of requests for information, neither TVL nor Digicel had responded in time for publication. I’m glad to say that in the days following, both of them contacted me. The way in which they did so was quite interesting to me, so this week I’ll share a few details, mixing them liberally with anecdote and observation of my own.
As with all such gossipy pieces, it’s possible the end result will tell you more about the author than the subjects.
Tanya Menzies, CEO of Digicel Vanuatu, was first to respond. She apologised that she hadn’t answered in the time I requested, but was quick to suggest we meet for coffee and a chat.
The ‘chat’, when it happened, lasted over two hours.
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Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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Thursday, November 27th, 2008
Well not actually stammer in the real sense of the word, but rather as in pronouncing the word wrong. It happened last ngiht, Wednesday 26 November, 2008. I as sitting in front of the TV watching the news and feeling a bit cynical about TBV’s sorry excuse of a news broadcasting setup when I was [...]
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Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
As promised, here are the first notes concerning the amendments to the Vanuatu Employment Act passed last Thursday in Parliament.
I’ll be writing more comprehensively about this issue in Saturday’s Weekender, but there’s a lot of meat on this issue, and I thought I’d package up the wonkery first….
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Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
The people of Torba Province, the northern most province of Vanuatu, have a common saying when asked about anything relating to government support. The response you get most often than not is; “oli fogetem mifala bageken”. What a shame!
The province consists of over 20 islands divided into two groups, the Torres Group which is almost [...]
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Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
The devil is havin’ a partay in Vanuatu right now. Amidst the global financial crisis, the local high unemployment rate, inadequate service delivery to the 80% (majority) of the population, increased crime rate and high inflation, the government decides to pass an Employment Ammendment Act that increases the minimum wage from VT20000 to VT26000. This [...]
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Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
There’s been a lot of concern – bordering on panic – among Vanuatu businesses over the last few days, following a vote in Parliament to amend the Vanuatu Employment Act.
Employers are alarmed that the amendments entitle employees to severance pay equal to 2 months salary for every year worked – an increase of 400% from the two weeks stated in the original Act. Moreover, they claim that this change is retroactive, so their liability for severance pay will be increased 4-fold the moment the Act is gazetted.
Many businesses claim they had no choice but to terminate all their staff and hire them anew in order to avoid disastrously high severance claims.
This change is so contentious that the Prime Minister, Edward Nipake Natapei, announced recently to an emergency meeting of the local Chamber of Commerce that he would hold the Act, effectively stopping the President from signing it into law. This would be highly irregular and arguably unconstitutional.
I’ve found it not a little disturbing that, with the all rhetoric flying about, nobody has published a proper analysis of the actual changes to the Act. With the assistance of a kind soul who provided me with the Amendment paper, I downloaded the existing Act from the Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PacLII) website and applied the edits myself, following the instructions in the paper.
You’ll find the results below the cut. But first, a few important notes:
- I AM NOT A LAWYER . The document below is not legally valid, binding or authoritative in any sense, and any comments I make – here or in subsequent posts – are nothing more than the opinions of an interested observer. Act on them at your peril .
- If you have difficulty with the formatting, blame OpenOffice and me, not PacLII.
- The changed sections have been highlighted in red. Deleted sections have been struck through, but left in their original positions. Inserted text typically immediately follows the deleted text. In places where you see no strike through text, assume that the entire item is newly inserted.
- Item 4 of the Amendment appears to insert text that already exists in the Act. I’ve highlighted the section regardless, and included an italicised note to this effect.
- Items 10 and 11 in the Amendment refer to subsections and items that do not coincide with the legislation below.
- I have to conclude therefore that either the PacLII site has an out-of-date copy of the Act, or the Amendment incorrectly references parts of the Act. Either is within the realm of likelihood, though I’m inclined to believe the former.
- In any case, the edited text below is incomplete, but does (I believe) include all the edits that have businesses here up in arms.
I’ll provide my own comments on the Amendment in another post to follow….
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Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
My photo website now hosts over 700 different shots.
Digital is great for photo gluttons.
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Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]
One of the hallmarks of a healthy democracy is our right – and our responsibility – to question every aspect of our national institutions. If the political dialogue over the last few years is any indication, Vanuatu’s democracy is alive and kicking.
Kalkot Mataskelekele’s adult life has been devoted to promoting and defining an independent, democratic Vanuatu. The nation has benefited from his consistency, wisdom and guidance. He has long been a public proponent of a US-style system with a clear division of power between legislative and executive branches of government. He has been joined by others in suggesting that factionalism could be addressed by putting limits on the number of political parties.
Mataskelekele is one of many leaders who have remarked on numerous occasions that we should not take the structures of government for granted. He rightly points out that Vanuatu’s Westminster system was created mostly as a sop to its departing colonial masters seeking reassurance that the nascent democracy would remain recognisable to them.
In the rush to create a new constitution, important aspects of Vanuatu culture were overlooked. The consensus-driven style of leadership-from-within that typifies chiefly rule is difficult to reconcile with majority rule and a codified, winner-take-all legal system.
Most difficult of all are the contending principles of public service and entitlement.
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Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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