Agricultural Agency wins public service award |23 November 2009

It was competing with three other public bodies – the Ministry of National Development, Social Development and the Employment departments.

Members of the agency received their certificates during a ceremony on Friday at the Seychelles Trading Company’s conference room.

Present at the ceremony were Chief Justice Frederick Egonda-Ntende, the Minister for Employment and Human Resources Development Macsuzy Mondon, Minister for Community Development, Youth, Sports and Culture Vincent Meriton, Minister for Education Bernard Shamlaye, Department of Public Administration’s principal secretary Jessie Esparon and other senior government officials.

The Seychelles Agricultural Agency impressed the members of the jury with their project entitled: “Participatory approach of farmers in in-farm research programme”.

Under this project, which was launched some time back, the farmers are taking part in the research to help them with production and ensure food security in the country.

And for this initiative, team member Keven Nancy collected their gold trophy from Minister Mondon along with R25,000 for the project and R5000 to be shared among the group.

“Creating geographic information systems (GIS) through innovations in Seychelles” is the project brought forward by the Ministry of National Development.

It focuses on the use of the GIS for land use planning and its reliability for land use mapping.

Team member Francis Coeur De-Lion was handed over with the silver trophy, R10,000 to go towards the project and R3000 to be shared among team members.

Michelle Marguerite collected the bronze trophy which went to the Social Development Department and cash prize of R2000.

Their “Child wellbeing project” was completed recently and they also produced a report which showed that children here are well taken care of.

The 2008-2009 Public Service Awards programme was held under the theme: “The enabling state and the role of the public service in wealth creation”.