4/21/2010
One Question, your Excellency!
Dear readers and partners in our faith in Lebanon,
The Lebanese Center for public information, faithful to its commitment to work incessantly to narrow the gap between the citizens and their "Dawle", has decided to start today a new mode of dialogue between the taxpayers and the Authorities.
This dialogue will take the form of some candid and direct questions that we shall address, at least once a day, to one of our thirty ministers and to the parliamentary commissions concerned on the subjects that most interest and sometimes puzzle the citizens.
We earnestly ask our ministers to answer these questions or have them answered directly on that blog or to the following email address: George@cpi-lebanon.org
We hope that this new initiative will serve in some small way to break down the barriers of incomprehension and suspicion that currently separate the taxpaying citizens from the tax collecting Authorities.
QUESTION NO.2 ADDRESSED TO HIS EXCELLENCY D. HUSSEIN AL HAJJ HASSAN, MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE
Today our question number two is addressed to his Excellency, D. Al Hajj Hassan, Minister of Agriculture. This question concerns the Lebanese Agricultural Plan and is presented in two parts:
1) YOUR EXCELLENCY, WILL YOU KINDLY TELL US WHY THE AGRICULTURAL PLAN THAT WAS PREPARED BY THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE IN 2005 AND SIGNED BY H.E. ALY HASSAN EL KHALIL HAS NEVER SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY AND AS A RESULT HAS NEVER BEEN IMPLEMENTED?
2) YOUR EXCELLENCY, WILL YOU KINDLY TELL US WHY THIS PLAN CANNOT BE NOW RECOVERED FROM THE ARCHIVES, UPDATED AND PRESENTED TO THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS FOR APPROVAL?
In fact we wish to know why the Lebanese Government has wasted a great deal of the taxpayer’s money (our money, your Excellency) and all the assistance that was provided by the FAO and other organizations like LEDO to prepare a very useful document of seventy eight pages only to ignore it later and let it fill up with dust on the archive shelves of the Ministry of Administrative Reform and in your Ministry? By the way, according to this Plan we were supposed to study and plan the execution of 316 lakes (bouhairas) of various sizes during the period 2005-2010. How many were studied in effect, your Excellency?
Surely, your Excellency, this is a very simple question that should not be so hard to answer.
Why can’t we dust up that Plan, and identify the parts of it that may have been (mistakenly?) executed since 2005? Why can’t we update this Plan to cover the period from 2010 to 2015?
This way, your Excellency, you will be able to identify and inform the citizens what parts of that Plan were executed during your mandate. But more importantly you will be able to hand over a guiding document to your successor who will assume the responsibility to carry out his mission more effectively.
Your colleague, H.E. Gebran Bassil, Minister of Energy and Hydraulic Resources recognized yesterday,
according to l’Orient Le Jour, the need for some well thought out planning for his ministry. We are sure that the Ministry of Agriculture is also in dire need of the same kind of planning, if not more.
We should not, every time that a new Minister takes over, have a new plan studied and prepared all over again. The current five year plan should be updated and amended, whenever necessary, but it should not be discarded and ignored altogether, otherwise there will be no CONTINUITY in the action of the government and the partnership between the citizens and the Authorities.
We look forward to hear from you on this Blog or in our email box at George@cpi-lebanon.org
Respectfully yours,
George Sabat
E-mail: ministry@agriculture.gov.lb
No comments:
Post a Comment