Male' City Council implements measures to encourage locals to maintain and clean mosques across the city
During the Male’ City Council meeting held on 22nd of February, it was decided that they will prioritize the hiring of locals to clean and maintain mosques, with foreigners only being hired if no Maldivians were available for the job.
During last week’s meeting, Male’ City mayor Adam Azim said they were unable to find Maldivians for the task and that they were seeking 114 individuals but only received 14 locals.
The meeting concluded without reaching a decision on the hiring of local employees.
In a meeting held on the 20th of this month, the mayor proposed extending the contract of temporary employees hired by Male’ City Council from one year to three years in order to find a solution.
“The tenure for hiring temporary employees is one year. However, we have faced difficulties in finding suitable local candidates due to the one-year rule,” he said.
“We also received feedback from potential applicants when we announced the need for locals to maintain mosques; they expressed hesitation about working for just a year”.
On the 20th of March, Male’ City Council unanimously decided to offer a minimum three-year contract to temporary employees. They also agreed to re-announce the recruitment of locals to clean and maintain mosques in Male’ City.
“Locals will only join us if we can provide them with job security,” Azim said.
The task of cleaning mosques was previously outsourced to companies. However, Male’ City Council has taken the initiative to undertake this responsibility. Currently, the cleaning and maintaining of mosques is mostly carried out by foreign workers.