 Welcome to NTN Nightly, I am Genelle Norville. This edition stops stories. The COVID-19 protocols have been adjusted to allow some concessions for fully vaccinated persons. The Minister for Agriculture continues to dialogue on the future of the NFTO and I tell DPIO successful expansion to St Lucia. The Government of St Lucia has approved amendments to the COVID-19 prevention and control measures effective the 31st of May to the 30th of June 2021. As St Lucia continues to strengthen its vaccination campaign and after careful deliberation on recommendations from the Command Centre the Cabinet of Ministers has agreed to adjust the COVID-19 protocols to allow some concessions for fully vaccinated persons. This includes allowing competitive sporting activities and social activities for a limited number of persons both with strict protocols. Prime Minister of the Honourable Alan Shastney made the announcement. Returning nationals and visitors with a negative PCR test and who are fully vaccinated will not require quarantine and random COVID-19 testing will be done at all points of airports on their arrival. Additionally, those persons who have a negative PCR test but have not been vaccinated will still have to do the 14-day quarantine. Social events with up to 50 fully vaccinated persons may be permitted after authorization through the Ministry of Health. A person with a valid liquor licence may permit an individual on licence premises to consume intoxicating liquor. A competitive sporting activity may be permitted within a controlled facility with spectators on condition that persons in attendance are fully vaccinated. Sporting events or activities must receive approval from the Ministry of Health and Wellness. All public health measures such as mandatory masks wearing in public, social distancing and washing and sanitizing of hands remain in place. The curfew remains 9pm daily. And the national vaccination drive continues next week. The sites are as follows. Monday, May 31, Sufre Hospital Grounds and VG Sports Complex. Tuesday, June 1, Darren-Sarmy Cricket Grounds and Philip Masler Grounds. Wednesday, June 2, VG Sports Complex and Denry Mothers Preschool. Friday, June 4, Darren-Sarmy Cricket Grounds and Jack Melwell Nest Centre and VG Sports Complex. Meantime, in an update on the NTN Information Command Centre regarding COVID-19 protocol breaches for the period March to May 2021, Assistant Commissioner Police Dr. Mashama Silly indicated that the highest arrests have been for non-adherents to the curfew and non-adherents to wearing a mask. Of the 1,231 recorded curfew and mandatory mask breaches, 250 arrests were made. Breaches in business sector registered at 194 with 30 arrests being made. They either do not have proper protocols in place, so they do not have sanitizing stations. They do not have or they do not maintain social distancing when people are going to the tailor on the line or the clerk on the line. And so oftentimes officers have to go in and ensure that this is done. We also have an issue where the curfew is at 9 and businesses close exactly at 9 o'clock. And so what you'll find is that after 9, there are hundreds of vehicles out on the road and it's after curfew. So we're asking that businesses close in time so that the workers and they themselves can get home before curfew, which is 9 o'clock, so that we can enforce the protocols and ensure that everyone is safe. Lawmen also intercepted 13 house parties resulting in four arrests and 30 mass crowd events resulting in two arrests. You'll find that we have those issues more on the weekend now. So from Friday to Sunday we have to go to we're given information that somebody's having a house party. You know their family members are not the ones at the party. It's more than the 10 that is allotted in the protocol and so we have to shut down those activities. During the holidays you will find people congregating on the beaches in large numbers, especially Pigeon Point Beach and Sandy Beach and they're not maintaining the social distancing as they should. And then you'll find two weeks later we have an increase in infections. There were 22 cases of breaches in home quarantine and state quarantine. 13 cases of hotel breaches were also registered resulting in one arrest. The total number of arrests made during the reporting period of March to May 2021 is 288. Meanwhile all 163 minibus travel breaches registered for this period were let off with warnings. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, of Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives Honourable Ezekiel Joseph recently chaired a meeting on the status of relations between the National Fair Trade Organization and the Government of St. Lucia. And it's your Antoine reports. As the Government of St. Lucia moves to gain more involvement in the National Fair Trade Organization and FTO Agriculture Minister Honourable Ezekiel Joseph convened a meeting with all nominees who are expected to fill in the executive positions on the organization's Board of Directors. The meeting which took place on Thursday May 27th 2021 demonstrates the government's commitment to initiating the strategic new direction which it says will benefit the NFTO and its member farmers as the previous operating procedures proved ineffective. That is not the thinking of government. The thinking of government is to see how we can work with the farmers. We believe that there are enough individuals in the respective groups that can provide proper leadership. I have the fullest confidence in that. What they need is the support. And that is what I am comfortable with the support of my cabinet. We are comfortable in giving the support and not to take over. According to Minister Joseph, government is continuing to collaborate with the NFTO Board to put the legal framework in place to begin restructuring the banana industry. The recent bailout in the amount of $4.5 million was made possible through a loan facility acquired through the Ministry of Finance to pay off banana farmers. I must say that whilst we have as a government despite the fact that we did not receive on a timely basis a reply from the NFTO as far as members are concerned, we took a decision with the support of the Cabinet and the Minister of Finance to pay some advance payment to the banana farmers. Now it has moved from 15 weeks. Well, it has moved from week 15 to week 20 because when they wrote us sometime in April, they owned banana farmers from week 7 to week 15. Today we learn that it has moved from week 15 to week 20 so there's still a lot of money outstanding for the banana farmers which of course we are factor in the loan that we are getting from the Central Development Bank with the support of the Ministry of Finance. Minister Joseph notes that the immediate goals of the NFTO as well as the government of St. Lucia are to ensure that farmers are paid on time and that they produce high quality commodities. It is going to be even more discouraging if the Board cannot increase its market share both on the UK market and the original market. So if the Board cannot do that and what I'm learning today is that there is an interest and there have been requests by the small market through Fives that they want more fruits. So it's for us now not only to sell more fruits but to sell more quality fruits. That's important because we cannot continue to export fruits and when it reaches there almost 50% of the fruit is being dumped. And instead of the importers of our fruit owing the NFTO, we cannot continue that. We have said so before. Minister Joseph reaffirms the St. Lucia government's commitment to assisting the island banana farmers constituent who are pivotal to the success of the island's agriculture economy. I tell BPO continues to expand its operations in St. Lucia having opened its doors on the 15th of July 2020 with 30 employees, the business now employs some 400 St. Lucia's. Featured in the program in the know produced by the Office of the Prime Minister, founder and chief executive officer Ioni Epstein explained that the company has been working with invest St. Lucia to expand even further. The business is already outfitting another facility and is looking to increase its staff complement to 1,200. With the second building we're coming up close to about 700 employees on the ground with the additional 30,000 square feet who want us to be close to about 1,200 employees here in St. Lucia. We love the south, although I love the north we have intentions to go to the north we feel very confident of being in this campus-like facility. In the second building we just finished building a canteen as well too and I'm told that the caterer is going to take over on the 1st of June and that will just really make life a lot easier for our team members and everybody to be in one area and we enjoy the south. It's easy to get in and out from our perspective as well as the quality of staff that we're seeing in the south are great and I understand from a transportation perspective those that are coming from outside of the south are a really easy way to get there as well. So it's been a great partnership it's been a great marriage just far and we're going to continue growing. In St. Lucia, I tell BPO was able to hire new employees who had lost their jobs in other sectors including the tourism sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Epstein noted that St. Lucia employees have exceeded expectations thus far. Every country that we're in has their uniqueness and I would say what we've seen with St. Lucia so far is we're seeing greater productivity we're seeing lower absenteeism and lower attrition than some of our traditional countries that we operate in. To me, that just says a lot for going back to our four Y's the quality of staff are producing as good or better than more senior sites so that means that they actually have more to gain. When you think about reliability we're confident they're going to come into work because we see our attrition lower we see our absenteeism lower when you think about integrity we're not having to worry about certain aspects of potential fraud or cyber crime or things like that here in St. Lucia and then family, we're coming up June, July 15th last year and we opened the site officially so we're coming up on a year in St. Lucia and they've just immersed themselves into the family culture as if they've been there for years. The founder and CEO indicated that the plan has always been to expand hiring new staff and increasing clientele some aspects of this plan will fast-track due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has affected business operations the world over. We went out to a few clients we set a target, we said you know within the first year let's attempt to get to 200 employees and we weren't really sure how the client take-up was going to be because although I may believe St. Lucia has what it takes our clients also have to believe that it has what it takes because they're taking a gamble as we know it is an industry that has been here for some years there is experience in it however it's not widely known so our clients took a gamble with us and basically because of the power of our brand and I tell saying to them you've got to try St. Lucia come with us test it out, let's see they said you know what, it's worth it we want to expand our footprint we want some country redundancy we trust you guys, you guys have done great work for us, let's go and as we started on that journey of going to different clients and I think also the pandemic actually helped to fast-forward that because people wanted more and more redundancy there was different protocols depending on the country you went to there was lockdowns because of what was happening in a particular country or in a major city so this gave them greater coverage founder and chief executive officer of ITEL BPO Ioni Epstein this is NTN Nightly up next, Primus Hutchinson with the NTN Nouvelle, Aguiol here at St. Lucia Distillers we produce an award winning range of rums and rum products we export our rums to the Caribbean North America and Europe standards facilitate our entry into overseas markets in the rum business it is critical that our distillers and blenders get it right St. Lucia Distillers is HASAP certified we use two standards from SLBS the standard for labeling of prepackaged foods SLNS 1-3 2014 and the National Specification for Rum SLNS 12-2003 we are also a registered member of the West Indies Rum and Spirit Producers Association Whisper SLBS ensures that we are up to standard and world class this message is brought to you by the Commonwealth Standards Network welcome back we join Primes Hutchinson for the NTN Nouvelle, Aguiol which has the benefit of international tourism the Prime Minister declare that we are working with theaden and have a good chance to achieve the level of the country which is in the best of the budget and we will achieve the level of the trip and we will also explain that are not more than a distance from us, all the necessary things that we have to do in advance must be done in advance. For the Ministry of Education, the industry must be very excited for all these benefits, initiatives that we have to take. Unfortunately, there are many difficult situations that are very difficult. The financial situation of the industry must always be very excited for all these initiatives that we have to take to the service that we have to take in advance for all these passengers because if the Ministry of Education doesn't take all these passengers to the service that we have to take, then there will be a lot of passengers who have to go to the excursion for the youth. For this purpose, we must work hard to buy the services that we have to take to the service that we have to take in advance. The other way is to organize the visitation between the FI. We can say that we are very excited to be able to ensure good negotiated agreement and to protect the桃es for this country. The first project to clean and clean in the John Compton in the Tetchimmee district We try to We try to We try to We try to we try to we try to we try to We want to make the people of this country proud. We want to make the people of this country proud. The people of this country, the people of the country, we want to make the people of this country proud. I think that this is an opportunity for agriculture, for fish, natural resources, for the cooperative in your area. Joseph, if you are satisfied with this, if you want to work in this country, you can do the work of the fisheries. It is very difficult. Minister Diwisus Natiwella, who is also a member of Kikotoa Tessiya to start working there, was affected by the rain and the rain was so heavy that he came to Jezala. Anouab Joseph Diki, who was the initiator of the initiative, and experienced the industry of the rain. The second phase of Jezala began in three months to come. Minister of Agricultural and Agriculture Anouab Ezekiel Joseph, I have brought good news for the FIG cultivators in the country and we have 4.6 million dollars of assistance to pay debt to NFTO and to support the financial situation of the FIG farmers. Minister Avicola, as we know, has a board of places, I have a chain description, and the Greek NFTO to fill in the government and the necessary information to facilitate payment to Jezala-Pabak. I am a member of the NFTO, and I am also a member of the Direct Boat Farmers. So, at least we can progress. Sanuwele Fair Chulma, it is the West Coast Ability Board, because the Ministry of Nutrity Program, to move with it at 4.2 million dollars but you need to pay about 4.5 million dollars. 4.5 million dollars are NFTO, which is almost 2.2 million dollars, so we have to pay the debt. In addition to salary, the staff members, the staff members have to be encouraged because we have to pay the debt. We have to pay the debt. We have to pay the debt. So at least we can check out how much money we have to pay the debt. But the Ministry of Nutrity of Jezala-Pabak, it is the same as the inhabitants, because we have to expect to make sure that the conditions that we have to pass are as long as possible. So, if we are able to do that, if we are able to do that, we are satisfied that consistently we are able to pay 100% of the debt, but in terms of our inspection, as we are working to make assistance for the Bokaldifig, we can inspect you. Please go over the Bokaldifig and describe what the consistent farm is doing to Bokaldifig. Thank you, Madam. We are now the Ministry of Nutrity, I am Yzequiel Joseph, That brings us to the end of NTN Nightly. Join us next time at 7pm with a repeat at 7am. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am Janelle Norvell.