Gibraltar’s representation at the Labour Party Conference continued yesterday evening with the Gibraltar Reception hosted by the Chief Minister Fabian Picardo and featuring a keynote speech by the UK Minister for Europe and the Overseas Territories Stephen Doughty MP.
Gibraltar’s bus and Lorry drivers will now be required to undertake 35 hours of periodic training, every five years in order to remain qualified. This new initiative, will see drivers carry out EU Certificate of Professional Competence training, which aims to maintain high standards of road safety and driving among professional drivers.
Sister Jodie Crook of St. Bernard’s Rainbow Ward has contributed to the British Medical Journal with her article analysing the effectiveness of the ‘Capillary Refill Time test’ as a means of assessing ill children. The article features in the Journal’s ‘Archives of Disease in Childhood’ section.
St. Bernadette’s Resource centre held their 2013 Sports Day yesterday morning at the tercentenary Sports Hall. The events included the caterpillar race, the obstacle course and the parachute event.
Users of the centre were split into the red and blue team and all participants were awarded medals by Minister for Social Services, Samantha Sacramento at the end of the morning. The Minister thanked the staff of the centre and the GSLA for organising and helping out with the event. She also congratulated each participant for performing extremely well.
The Government is pleased to announce that for the first time ever Gibraltar is completely up to date in the transposition of EU directives.
This achievement reflects the priority that the Government has given to this matter since being elected into office on 9 December 2011. There were 43 directives pending implementation at that time which were passed due the date allowed for transposition, including 8 which were already subject to an infraction procedure. Moreover, throughout the fourteen months since then, a further 19 directives were transposed, so that a total of 62 directives have been transposed during this period.
In order to achieve this historic milestone for Gibraltar, the Government has recruited and increased compliment of the number of legal drafters in the European Union and International Department (EUID) and restructured that Department.
The lawyers and staff of this Department, under Chief Legal Advisor Michael Llamas QC, have worked extremely hard in order to ensure that the policy objective of the Government of full transposition of every outstanding directive on the relevant EU list has now been met.