 Hello, I'm Richmond Felix, and this is Nation Beat, your daily information bulletin from our team at the Government Information Service. Here are our leads. Solid strides made to expand St Lucia's tourism product. Representatives of the EU Court of Auditors review information related to works at the National Hospital. The DPV reaffirms its commitment to ensuring access to justice. And exports in Lucia focus on improving the cocoa industries. The Government of St Lucia is taking solid strides to establish a National Village Tourism Council, which will work to expand St Lucia's tourism product, more from journal Novel. We're expected to provide an opportunity for St Lucia's to get involved in the sector from an entrepreneurial level. This will not only facilitate the creation of jobs, but also a nation of entrepreneurs. Minister of Responsibility for Tourism, the Honourable Dominic Fede, indicated that the Government is on the verge of signing the contract, which will finalize the legislation needed to establish the entity. Subsequently, at the end of November, a motion will be taken to the House of Assembly. It is hoped that the entity which is to execute the functions of the Village Tourism will be established by January. The Cabinet has already taken a policy decision where we will refocus the cooperation agreement with the Taiwanese Government and instead of spending 19 or 20 million on the CDP project, as you know it, the constituency development programme, we will now allocate significant sums of that money to fund micro-tourism enterprises so that people can get involved in the non-traditional accommodation sector. What we have seen is that with the advent of technology, Expedia, Airbnb, the little guys now have a chance and what it has done, it has leveled the playing field as it pertains to marketing. Officials have remarked that what attracts travellers to a country is changing and as a result St Lucia must take the appropriate steps to stay relevant in the current market. The Minister added that there has been tremendous interest in the initiative the world over. As we go forward, we see a lot of excitement internationally on this. In fact, a lot of our trade media are very, very interested in providing coverage for Village Tourism because this is an exciting project that elevates the product of St Lucia. People are coming to destinations now, not to lay on the beach. That traveller is fast diminishing. So people are coming, as Tiffany said a while ago, for unique experiences. And those experiences will be shown through your culture, it will be shown through your festivals, your heritage, through your architecture, through your villages. So we've got to become very serious about preserving our villages. We can enhance them, we can make them look great, but we must never allow our villages to lose their soul, if you will. Tourism is St Lucia's highest revenue owner contributing over 40% of St Lucia's gross domestic product. From the Government Information Service, I am Genelle Norville. In related developments, Anisia Antoine gives us an update on work in progress towards the establishment of a National Tourism Advisory Council. The Tourism Advisory Committee continues to work on the framework and strategic plan for the sustainable development of tourism in St Lucia. The advisory committee is made up of representatives from the public and private sector, who have an interest in the sustainability of the tourism sector. The vision for this committee is to have competitive tourism as a key driver of sustainable national development, and we need to look at what is happening in that context. There are many players in the tourism sector, you have the hotel sector, you have taxi drivers, tour operators, service providers, and they are all doing their own business. What this committee will try to do is to bring these together, to identify the gaps, how do you improve quality of delivery, so that the various players can come together in one place to ensure that there is competitiveness and that the benefits of tourism accrue to the population as a whole. Some of the key issues and areas being developed address health and safety, infrastructure, land use policy, and destination experiences development. I think the tourism advisory council is something that is needed for St Lucia at this time. We have a great variety of Madrid companies, entities, institutions in St Lucia, who one way or the other work with the tourism industry. As we know, tourism is considered one of the main economic sectors for St Lucia, and so we all have a part to play in ensuring that it remains competitive, it remains vibrant, and it remains a catalyst for economic development. And so when we come together and we can have one avenue so that we can advise and inform of the various works that our various entities are doing as it relates to tourism, it augurs well for St Lucia. At Thursday's session, the group worked on drafting the strategic framework, which includes the visioning, formulating guiding principles, and strategic goals. Next month, the advisory committee will meet to further develop its work programme. It is expected that legislation and transition management will be completed by December and the new tourism advisory council fully operational by the end of 2019. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. Meanwhile, the Office of National Offerising Officer has provided clarification on the presence in St Lucia of representatives of the European Court of Auditors. The Court of Auditors are essentially the function like external auditors. The name is a little misleading in that they do not execute any judicial functions. The primary role of the court is to externally check the budget of the European Union and to see whether it has been implemented correctly. In so doing, they check whether EU funds have been spent legally and with sound management. In this role, the court essentially is performing an independent function and one of its key roles is to present an annual report to the European Parliament. And it is based on this report that the European Parliament will make a decision whether or not to sign off the European Commission's handling of the budget for that year. The court, if satisfied, will also send assurances to the council and Parliament that the EU taxpayers' money is being spent properly. Now in the case of St Lucia, we had a mission in January 2017 and that mission was to undertake a verification exercise as it related to the MOCA project. The auditors expressed satisfaction with the implementation of the tender and contractual arrangements related to the infrastructural design and works of the MOCA housing project. According to the NAO, the visit is a standard practice in keeping with the principles of accountability and transparency and is an integral part of the process of monitoring, evaluation, management and accounting of programs funded under the European Union, African, Caribbean and Pacific Development Corporation. At this juncture, the auditors will engage in reviewing information related to the design, construction and supply of equipment to the new National Hospital, otherwise known as the OK EU Hospital. The objective is to ensure that the EU funds are correctly accounted for and spent in accordance with the relevant rules and regulations. Indicative program, under which we received significant amount of grant resources for the new National Hospital, the own King EU National Hospital as it's called. We've also received funds for staybacks going back into the 80s and 90s and what we call the special framework agreement, the SFAs. The European Union has traditionally been our largest source of donor funds, grant funds. You're watching Nation Beat, we're back with more after this break. If you're HIV positive or have an STI, having unprotected sex with multiple partners puts them in grave danger. You'll expose every partner and their present and future partners to HIV or another STI. Use a condom every time you have sex. You can live a productive life even if diagnosed with HIV. Remember early detection is key to your survival. Be responsible, protect yourself and others. Help stop the spread of HIV and other STIs. Welcome back. The Office of Public Prosecution faces many challenges in carrying out its duties. Speaking at the opening of the law year, Director of Public Prosecutions reaffirmed his office's commitment to ensuring access to justice, highlighting long-standing concerns of backlog of cases and concerns from the criminal division of the High Court. He noted that his office is severely hampered in its quest to dispose of the many criminal cases still pending. He reassured, however, that his office remains resolute in ensuring that all effort is made to assist the court in fulfilling its mandate. All data emanating from the registry of the High Court of Justice in its criminal jurisdiction reveals that the criminal division disposed of a total number of 733 cases in 2017. Clearly, it can be anticipated that the disposal rate in 2018 will be extensively affected by the intermittent and sporadic sittings of the High Court due to the aforesaid challenges thus causing an increase in the dreaded backlog of criminal cases that my office and the court faces in the circumstances. I, however, have been reliably informed and verily believe the same to be true, that this challenge of proper housing will be addressed in short order by the retrofitting of the building which presently houses the criminal division. The Office of Public Prosecution and the Royal St. Lucia Police Force also face another challenge, that of intimidation of and other threats to witnesses of serious crimes. Green asserted that the time has come to implement a well-structured witness protection program and the implementation of legislation for anonymous witnesses. This in my view will foster the greater confidence of vital witnesses in our judicial system. I also wish to applaud the efforts of the Honourable Chief Justice and the Sentencing Advisory Committee for the consideration of the implementation of sentencing guidelines. This, I submit, is a very timely initiative and absolutely necessary in establishing uniformity in the approach of judges and magistrates to sentencing. The Government of St. Lucia has announced new members for the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council. The members have indicated that they are fully committed to building on the successes of the previous Council, as well as both in new approaches and initiatives towards continued enhancement in productivity and competitiveness. The Council held its inaugural meeting in July to outline the priority areas and chart the way forward. Mr. Gerard Begas, Island Manager for St. Lucia Tropical Shipping, is the Council's new chair. He is an active member of the St. Lucia Chamber of Commerce and has also served on the boards of the St. Lucia A&C Port Authority and the National Insurance Corporation. A lot of the international agencies measure things like productivity and competitiveness, people like the World Bank, etc. And traditionally we have not scored particularly well on those counts and I have been very involved with trade facilitation efforts in St. Lucia over the last several years. I have sat on the Government's Trade Facilitation Task Force and I have preached the Gospel of making it easier to do business in St. Lucia. So this is something that is very near and dear to me and productivity speaks exactly to those issues. Established in October 2013, the NCPC is responsible for identifying key issues hampering competitiveness and productivity in St. Lucia and through advocacy and research, produce timely and effective remedies. The Council plans to continue its mandate by way of a range of initiatives and programs and through its annual Productivity Awareness Week. Well the Council has a chocked full work program so there's a lot on the agenda right now but I think the key thing here is that we need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. So we need to be better at getting things from the idea stage to implementation. So we implement, implement, implement. Expo St. Lucia says the cocoa industries have a very high export potential. The organization recently submitted a proposal to compete Caribbean with a view to secure funding for its clients in that endeavor. For example right now we know that there is great focus on cocoa, especially cocoa from St. Lucia which is considered one of the best in the world because of our volcanic soil and our mountains etc. and we are continually looking for funding areas to support projects that are involved in cocoa and we recently applied for a, we recently submitted a proposal to compete Caribbean to see if we could enhance some of the cocoa industries that we have in St. Lucia. Such investments are usually undertaken when there is potential that not only benefits the individual but also has macroeconomic effects on the country. Funding grants mainly assist with the improvement of quality standards. For the women in Miquud and in Fawassong are companies with export potential and part of our mandate is to provide training to these exporters to get them on par with international standards. As you know while we have market access to many of those large markets, market penetration is difficult because of a number of technical barriers to trade. So what we do at TIPA is we enable or we train these exporters to go over those hurdles in terms of the sanitary and phytosanitary issues you know getting accepted into the US FDA etc. We provide that support, we provide training. And that's Nation Beat Thursday on behalf of the rest of the team. I'm Richmond Felix, hope you join us again.