The regular Cabinet meeting, chaired by HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani approved the draft law on protecting the Arabic language and decided to submit it to the Advisory Council.
Following the meeting which was held at the Emiri Diwan, HE the Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Dr Hassan Lahdan Saqr al-Mohannadi stated that the draft law on protecting the Arabic language included several commitments such as all governmental and non-governmental entities should commit to protecting and supporting the Arabic language in all activities and events they hold.
The draft law also includes the commitment of ministries, other governmental bodies, public entities and institutions, associations and private institutions, private institutions of public interest and entities, whose budget is financed by the state, to use the Arabic language in their meetings and discussions and all the decisions, regulations, instructions, documents, contracts, correspondence, labels, programmes, publications, visual, audiovisual and written announcements and other transactions they carry out.
The entities subject to the provisions of this law shall comply with the draft law within six months from the date of its implementation. The Cabinet may extend this period for one or more similar periods.
The cabinet then approved the draft decision of the Council of Ministers to form a consultative statistics committee and organising its work.
The draft decision provides for the composition of the consultative statistics committee set out in Law No 2 of 2011 on official statistics, under the chairmanship of the Minister of Development Planning and Statistics and the membership of representatives of the authorities concerned.
The committee is competent to provide advice on all statistical processes; propose priorities to meet users’ needs for statistical data, propose the necessary annual statistical plans and programmes, and provide support to improve statistical work.
It also approved the draft decision of the Minister of Interior to form a permanent committee on births and deaths.
Under the draft decision, the permanent committee on births and deaths stipulated in Law No. 3 of 2016 regulating the registration of births and deaths shall be formed under the chairmanship of a representative of the Ministry of the Interior and the membership of representatives of the concerned authorities.
The committee is competent to consider requests for change, amendment or correction of data of a newborn or the deceased in the birth or death registers, as well as consider birth and death registration requests reported after one year from the date of birth or death, in addition to requests that have not been registered, lost or duplicated.
The cabinet also gave approval for a draft decision of the Council of Ministers to amend the organisation of some administrative units of the Ministry of Culture and Sports and defining their terms of reference. It also approved a draft decision of the Minister of Culture and Sports to establish sections in the administrative units of the Ministry of Culture and Sport and defining their terms of reference.
The Council of Ministers also approved participation in EPEX India 2018 scheduled to be held in New Delhi from 28 to 30 June 2018.
The cabinet gave the approval for accession to the Marrakesh treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print disabled.
The cabinet took the necessary measures to ratify the multilateral competent authority agreement on automatic exchange of financial account information, as well as the convention on mutual administrative assistance in tax matters, as amended by the amended protocol to the convention on mutual administrative assistance in tax matters.
The Council of Ministers reviewed the memo of HE the Minister of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs on the outcomes of a study on setting regulations for the requests submitted by companies to approve the application of the provisions of Article 6 (item 5) of Law No. 24 of 2002 regarding retirement and pensions to Qatari employees. The cabinet adopted appropriate decision on this matter.
