 Welcome to Nation Beat. I am General Norvel bringing you this brief on the pulse of our nation and highlights around the heart of St Lucia. The St Lucia Parliament approves the amendment to the island's tax regime. New legislation gives birth to fundamental changes to child care and protection and OECS educators undertake a review of educational initiatives in the region. Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, the Honourable Alan Shastney, on Tuesday, November 20, 2018, sought Parliament's approval to amend St Lucia's tax regime. Earlier this year, St Lucia was labelled by the European Union, EU, as having harmful preferential tax regimes indicating that the grouping was interested in promoting good governance worldwide and maximising efforts at preventing tax fraud and evasion. The EU said St Lucia does not apply the base erosion and profit shift in minimum standards and wants to commit to addressing the issue by 31 December 2018. In that vein, a team was put together to create what the Prime Minister indicated is a territorial tax structure. And that we have been working with the EU and there are still some issues that we need to define and that is in the area of substance. So going to a territorial tax structure now moves the goalpost because the territorial tax structure has allowed us, Mr. Speaker, to deal with the ring fencing. So by now only charging taxes on activities that take place in St Lucia, there is no more ring fencing, meaning there isn't a separate set of rules for international business corporations and local business corporations. So we've also internally had dialogues with the lawyers, with the accountants, with the international finance services providers all along the way. So this is, again, nothing that's being done in absence of anyone. Still on the subject of amending St Lucia's tax regime, MP for Schroesel Sultibus, and Minister for Commerce Bradley Felix addressed the Free Zone Amendment Bill. According to Honourable Felix, the amendment was made relatively easy due to St Lucia not having any banking or insurance activity ongoing in the free trade zone. He highlighted the areas considered for amendments. Mr. Speaker, the following sections have been given consideration for amendment Section 2. The amendment of Section 2 corrects minor errors in the legislation, such as inserting the word authority in the definition of free zone management authority and removing the word St Lucia in the definition of free zone import. The latter created a redundancy which confused the definition of a national customs territory. I think that's quite self-explanatory, Mr. Speaker. Section 7 is amended to delete the subsections which allow for the Board to develop regulations on the procedure to obtain a license. This will now be placed in Section 10, which deals with the procedures for obtaining a free zone license. Section 10 deletes subsection 10-1. The insertion of a new 10-1 specifies the information of an applicant, specifies the information an applicant is required to provide. This allows for greater transparency and oversight. The amendment also provides all companies must have an economic presence in St Lucia. Amended sections also included but was not limited to 10A, 11 and 15A. The St Lucia social and economic labs brought together over 150 stakeholders from all sectors of the economy. The lab methodology is a new approach which the government is undertaking to develop and deliver the medium-term development strategy for 2019-2022. St Lucia joined the rest of the world Tuesday in celebrating Universal Children's Day with a passage of a suite of legislation that will ensure a child-centered and child-friendly nation. The Senutia Parliament was unanimous in passing the pieces of legislation that will redefine how the state treats, relates and cares for its children. The Child Care Protection and Adoption Bill and the Child Justice Bill have been decades in the making. The process began in 1993 with St Lucia signing on to the Convention of the Rights of the Child at the United Nations. This committed the government of St Lucia to providing legislative and policy frameworks, institutional arrangement with service and program interventions, all designed to improve the environment in which children are cared. Presently the Children and Young Persons Act of 1972 and the Criminal Code of 2005 are the only pieces of legislation that speak to the care and protection of children and the management of children in conflict with the law. Minister for Equity, Social Justice, Local Government and Empowerment, Hon. Leonard Montute, told the House that the laws were woefully inadequate. These mainly focus on child justice with limited scope for protection of children. It does not specifically state the agency that is responsible for child protection matters. And the Adoption Act is currently under the purview of the Attorney General's office. With the passage of this bill that we are looking at today, the Child Care Protection and Adoption Act, we are hoping to remedy some of those situations and to state categorically who is directly responsible for care and protection of children and under whose purview the various responsibilities form. The legal definition of a child has changed under the new legislation affecting the existing age of consent which is 16 years. A child is now deemed to be under the age of 18 with this new bill. Previously a child was considered to be 15 and under and so Mrs. Speaker, that in itself will have certain implications in terms of how we deal with children who run foul of the law in terms of how they are dealt with, the punitive process for children of that age. Of course it will have implications as well for consent. The age of criminal responsibilities maintained at 12 years. However, the new Child Justice Bill dictates a major shift in how the state apprehends processes and provides services to children. It makes provisions for 12 to 14 year offenders mental health status and to be considered before letting out sentences. So an assessment of their psychological and mental health will be made before sentencing them. The legislation clearly identifies the probation and parole services unit role in dealing with children in conflict with the law. With the passage of the bills, the Human Services Department will be empowered as the lead agency in matters of child care, protection and adoption. From the Government Information Service, Lisa Joseph reporting. This is Nation Beat, coming up OECS Educators undertake a review of educational initiatives in the region. The option not to receive advertisements and sharing personal information with third parties do not sign a contract that you are not satisfied or comfortable with. This message is brought to you as a public service announcement by Ectel, the NTRC and this station. Welcome back. Tuberculosis or TB knowledge among healthcare professionals in the public and private sector has been enhanced following a series of tuberculosis sensitization workshops for Nell Neptune reports. The Ministry of Health and Wellness with the support of the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO, hosted a series of workshops aimed at sensitizing health practitioners on the prevention, control and management of tuberculosis TB. Tuberculosis is a global health problem that affects millions of people each year. Physician of the infectious diseases unit in the Department of Health and Wellness, Dr Gil Kajada says, although the prevalence rate of TB in St Lucia is low, it is necessary that control of the disease remains a public health priority. St Lucia is considered to be a low incidence or low burden TB country, which is good. We have less than 10 cases per 100,000 in the population. We'd like it to stay that way and actually we're aiming for the end TB strategy and we're hoping to end TB by 2025. Dr Kajada says it is of paramount importance that healthcare practitioners are competent in the diagnostic and clinical management of tuberculosis. We also want to sensitize persons so that we can uptake cases. Okay, so if we have a situation where a person has been presenting to a facility and they have a cough for two weeks or more, then we should have TB on your radar, yeah? So we're not going to say it is TB, but we want you to think TB as one of the diagnosis that it could possibly be in addition to something like a lower respiratory tract infection. So we don't find ourselves in the situation where a person goes repeatedly to a health facility and it ends up that they have TB but it just took a while to diagnose it. Paho Advisor for Disease Prevention Control and Health Surveillance, Dr Jean-Marie Wangobowo facilitated the workshops and emphasized on the need for practitioners to be updated on the new methodologies for the proper management of TB. It is very important that we understand how to do contact tracing to make sure that really whoever is at risk of developing a disease is detected in time and those who might require treatment they are properly identified and provided a treatment that they need. The tuberculosis sensitization workshops focused on subject areas such as diagnosis and clinical management, TB contact tracing and TB cohort analysis. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, I am Fenel Neptune. Chief Education Officers, Directors of Education and Education Planners from the Eastern Caribbean region are in St. Lucia to convene its seventh annual meeting. Alicia Ali reports that the meeting's agenda comprises review in existing educational initiatives with the view to continue harmonizing the education system to benefit children of the sub-region. The issues being discussed range from leadership in OECS education including issues with examinations and key considerations for the organization of Eastern Caribbean State Sector Strategy, the OESS. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, Michelle Charles commended participants for such a comprehensive agenda. In going through your program, I realized that the themes are cross-cutting and touching some very critical and pivotal topics that are key to transitioning our education landscape. St. Lucia's Chief Education Officer, Rufina Charles, is positive the meeting will be a success. And a lot of the activities undertaken by OECS have really been thoughts that we as CEOs and Directors and Planners have really put action to it. And I hope that this one is no different because lots of new thoughts and ideas will be created here and we will be the movers and shakers to take them into action. Marcellus Aubertine is the head of the Human and Social Cluster at the OECS Commission. He empowered participants to guide the meeting. Are you going to propose a shift in the agenda? Knowing first and foremost that the key agenda for this meeting has been to drive and guide the implementation of the OECS. Or are you going to look at a sort of a broader agenda, to look at the emerging issues in education, the issues that confront you daily in your respective ministries? The issues that confront us as a region, noting that we have been challenged under the revised Treaty of Basia to work collectively and collaboratively to implement the reforms that are necessary to advance the Economic Union. The meeting is being held until Wednesday, the 21st of November at the Bay Gardens Marina Bay Hotel in Grosele. From the Communications Unit in the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, I am Alicia Ali reporting. That's Nation Beat. Join us next time on NTN at 7.30pm with our repeat at 7.30am and on this station as we fill the pulse and heart of our community. You can also catch up with us any time on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am Channel Novel.