President Wavel Ramkalawan, chaired a scheduled meeting of the Cabinet yesterday, Wednesday 22nd March in which a number of policy and legal memoranda were approved.
As part of the Government’s plan to have effective boards that will provide leadership oversight to public entities, Cabinet approved the setting up of a framework for the nomination, selection and appointment of Boards of Directors of Government Bodies. The framework will include the setting up of a specific committee to process applications and nominations. The framework will open opportunities for more people to participate on Boards. Interested individuals will submit their CV to the Committee. Training will be provided to potential Board members to equip them with knowledge of relevant laws that they will need to abide by. This will create a pool of trained personnel to serve on Boards.
Cabinet approved amendments to the PUC Act 1986 (CAP 196) for the purpose of increasing the number of members on the PUC Board. The Board will now move from ‘no more than 7’ to ‘no more than 9’ members. This amendment will allow the Board to implement best practices where a number of Board sub-committees are created to address audit, financial, risk, remuneration and other pressing technical matters. The quorum for the meeting will increase from 3 to 5 in order to be in line with the requirements of the Public Enterprise Monitoring Commission (PEMC).
Cabinet was briefed on the plan by the Ministry of Education to trial an ethics education programme in the schools. Ethics Education is a means to strengthen the educational programmes and pedagogical approaches that foster ethical values in an intercultural and interfaith learning context. The programme which is being supported by UNESCO has been well received by Cabinet as a tool to bring peace and harmony in the community.
Cabinet was also briefed on the analysis of the performance of students in state schools in the international October/November Examination Series 2022. Cabinet expressed concern about the results and requested that further analysis of the data be done to understand what needs to be done to improve teaching and learning.