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The deadline for submissions to the proposed National Council for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF) through A People’s Charter for Change and Progress has been further extended to August 31st, 2007 to encourage more participation particularly at the Provincial and District levels in the country. Recent consultation meetings with public administrators at Provincial Council Offices and National Advisory Councilors revealed the need to take the proposal down further as it seems that some may have not fully read or understood the contents in the Proposal. The Department of Information’s Rudra Maharaj spoke to the Permanent Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office Parmesh Chand about the proposed NCBBF & People’s Charter for Change. Minfo: Please explain what the proposed People’s Charter is all about? Chand: The Peoples Charter is only a proposal at the moment. The document we have circulated is a proposal on building a better Fiji and part of which involves development of a charter for change in progress. So the document in itself is not a peoples charters it a proposal which has been subjected to consultations and once we receive feedbacks we will work on forming a National Council for Building a Better Fiji that is a body that will oversee the work of National Task Teams. There will be six different task teams who will harness the views of the public on various topical issues to be able to come up for a proposal for a charter. So it is all a consultative mechanism to be able to come with a Peoples Charter. Minfo: What is the main aim of the charter? Chand: The main aim for this council of Building a Better Fiji is off course there is various imperatives meaning objective. The idea is to discuss the fundamentals, which will arrest any further decline in our economy. Secondly, we would like to look at some major initiative for re-structuring and change a large part of what is in terms of poor performance now or contributing poor performance is that we have ended up with a huge public service eating a lot of resources which could be better utilized for productive infrastructure for hospitals, better security measure for Law and Order . So the idea is how the major restructuring can happen in the Public Service and also in Public Enterprises for building a better Fiji. Thirdly, an idea to create an atmosphere of dialogue that everybody participates in bringing issues of concern and issues which will build a better Fiji. Finally of course through addressing these fundamentals and addressing the necessity for developing a more exclusive and progressive Fiji. There would arise an opportunity to develop a charter which should really a peoples charter meaning the people will commit themselves and thereby everybody will works toward it. Minfo: Lifting the living standards of the growing poor and underprivileged is the mandate of the Interim government. How will the Peoples Charter assist in achieving this set goal? Chand: It is about making a change for the better. There would be some economic pains initially but for later on, there is an issue of ensuring that we are able to arrest declining economy. Secondly, to restruct the economy so that ordinary grassroots people are able to participate meaningfully in the economy rather than they continue sleeping and e marginalized. Thirdly, for everyone to have a say and see the economy shape. By doing that we are hopeful the marginalized and poor will have an opportunity to participate in the economic development of our country. Minfo: It is stated in the draft copy of the Charter that reforms may take place in the public sector. What are some of those areas where reforms may take place? Chand: The Public Service or the Civil Service has become very large for a country of our size since we have as much as 35,000 civil servants in a population of 800,000 people. It has become very expensive to maintain this size and a good proportionate of the budget and resources is going into the salary of civil servants. Likewise if you have that many civil servants you require building, office space, vehicles and various programms to keep them occupied. So all this is costing a lot of money as much as 82% of Government’s resources being chewed towards maintaining the current expenditure which is meeting the civil service and operating expenditure. The idea is therefore to turn that around. At the moment 82% goes in running the Government and 18% goes to meeting infrastructure and capital requirement in growing the economy. The idea is to turn it around and bring the area of capital expenditure or the area which would deliver as growth higher say around to 30 % so as operational expenditure to be as low as 65% -70%. So that will require a lot of reforms. The other area of reforms is the attitude in Public Service .The public servants need to be taught and be made aware that the jobs are not guaranteed for them and they need to work for their salary, they need to produce and deliver at the end of the day what they are being paid. That realization is not there much in the civil service. While it has become a career for some it has become a guaranteed job for others and that’s why productivity is very low. It’s just an 8 to 4.30pm job for many of them, but there are some very good civil servants whereas some people just come on the spot and leave on time. All these cultures needs to change because it is equally hard to get jobs in the private sector so why it should it be easy for people in the civil service and economy to hold on to it. That culture has to change, the way we also rent building to occupy office space is to change, the way we lease out and maintain our government assets also needs to change. There are a lot of wastage just like machinery, equipment, building material and many are in some rural area. Government stations which were in the rural areas was a sight to see before but they are in a very bad shape in many areas particularly in the rural villages, district centres or district administration are in run down shape, so the idea is to see how best that could change by ensuring that we are able to use those assets, maintain them better and also ensure that people who can better use them and deliver some results are given some opportunity particularly, the private sector. Minfo: How will the social issues such as growing inequality and poverty be addressed? Chand: The crux of the whole thing is to restructure the economy in which we are able to spend more to grow the economy, able to get our infrastructure particularly roads and water in good condition so that investors would like to come and invest here and contribute to our economy. We have less problems with maintenance of vehicles and as well as less diseases if we have clean water. We are trying to address all that. The work in that area is enormous and the resources are very scarce. The idea is to see how best we can get the resources while talking to countries like China, India, Malaysia and the European Union and as to how best we address some of those issues. We don’t have the resources ourselves and we want to ensure that everybody gets clean and consistent water supply. For those in the interior part of the islands we want to ensure reliable shipping services so that they get their produce out from those remote areas to the market which could be sold and people could have a source of income and livelihood. Minfo: What is being done to improve the mutual and bilateral relationship between the country’s immediate neighbours like New Zealand and Australia? Chand: We are hoping that with the milestones we have achieved they will come in and lend us a helping hand but that has unfortunately not happened and their demand continue to grow whereas we have focused on delivering certain milestones particularly in ensuring to remove checkpoints, lifting the public emergency regulation and minimizing abuse of rights, commitment to doing the Census, which is a requirement in the process of the boundaries and also advertise the post of the Supervisor of Elections. We expect that Australia and New Zealand and international communities to see that these are some of the honourable things we have done. Let’s stick to the next step but that has not happened so now they are asking us to commit to a time frame which we are working on at the moment. Minfo: What steps are being taken to revive the country’s current Economic situation? Chand:The steps needed to be taken immediately are to ensure that firstly we arrest the decline of economy. This decline is not something which has happened in the last few months it was bound to happen with the type of policies that was promoted by the previous administration. This decline was already on the way as our exports have been declining for the last 24 years - exports being one of the major contributors of economic investment. It was also the public sector expenditure which was the major contributing factor to the investment. The idea is to grow private investment so we are committed to creating an environment where exports grow, good infrastructure to support the industry particularly excess to roads so all this should create the fundamental for a better economy. The area of Law and Order particularly crime situation is very important and the Interim Government is committed to seeing that the Police continue to receive the resources they require. We have gone very quickly to appointing a Police Commissioner through the Constitutional Officers Commission and now the onus is on the new Police Commissioner to get most of his senior positions filled to be able to get back the resources and to seek to address the crime and lawlessness in some parts of our society. So that’s an important part of the area where people are contained that is good law and order. Minfo: What measures will be taken to ensure that land is properly being utilized? Chand: It is a rather difficult issue since it is governed through entrenched legislation thereby any changes to the system of leases can only happen through parliament and through the required majority in Parliament. Having said that, the usage of land is very important and the idea is to create a massive awareness campaign on how the land which is not used by the traditional owners is made available for productive use. It has always been a political issue unfortunately the economics of this has been never liked and that what hurts the traditional landowners most and the tenants. We note to promote the better concept of economic use of Land and the most sustainable use of it within the confines of existing laws. How this is to happen probably the National Council For Building a Better Fiji may take that as an agenda by broad participation by the landowners and tenant community then we should come to some kind of realization. It is not the ownership of the land, which is the issue the ownership is of course an entrenched issue never to be threatened. The issue is making it available for usage to the people be it be Fijians and others who could use it there should be a mechanism and facilitation readily available. So it is a challenge which is on our door step at the moment. Minfo: How will the Charter be of benefit to Fiji as a whole? Chand: There are a lot of issues quite difficult issues which has not been addressed. In the political area it becomes too political so the politicians have always left it aside and did not address it. May be this bottom up driven Council for Building a Better Fiji out of which comes the Peoples Charter but time will tell because we have floated the proposal for consultation and have received a lot of feed back so far which all looks very positive apart from few one who have publically talked about the short fall of it. But we are quite positive as soon as we reach the deadline and receive the submissions we will develop a substantive Cabinet paper out of for fuller consideration by Cabinet. Minfo: Can you please explain what the small Grants Scheme is about? Chand: The small grant scheme is a kind of facility set up using funding assistance made available to us by trade mission of Taiwan to help small projects. It was previously there for a quite a while administered and implemented by the Prime Ministers Office but previously it was administered by Ministers who had the opportunity to come up with projects from their own constituency and thereby it had some political connotation and political consideration were given but now the Interim Government has removed that and further developed and refined this scheme. Provincial Administrators and Commissioners will identify the projects and bring it directly to the Prime Ministers Office. The money has just been available to us to the tune of US$250,000 and we are now seeking projects. The projects could be anything to do with community development, be it for a particular area, construction of a project venture to help a particular village or community. All will be accommodated under this small grant scheme. Minfo: Lifting the living standard of the poor and underprivileged is the mandate of the Interim Government. How will this scheme help you in achieving this set goal? Chand: It is meant for participation by the broader community in self-help income generating projects, community projects, particular youth groups or the community may come up with an income generating project, so it is meant to improve the living standards and lifestyle for the people largely in the rural areas. And at the moment complete flexibility for the Prime Minister to determine the quantum or the magnitude of assistance to be provide. Before there was a ceiling of $5000, but now that has been removed and could even try to accommodate even large projects if that can be of benefit to the committee. Minfo: Who can apply for this scheme? Chand: Anybody can come up with a proposal on behalf of a community or village group either individual or community to put up a proposal but it has to benefit a community and not an individual. Minfo: What are the procedures they will have to follow in order to apply for the Small Grants Scheme? Chand: Firstly there has to be project, which is of benefit to the community and they need to submit it through the District Officer and the Commissioner who will do the vetting and forward it to us. The criteria is very simple, it can be a one page proposal or a couple of pages, either written in vernacular saying what the project is, who all will benefit, what are the costs, how it will be implemented and who is to implement it. Minfo: Is there anything else you would like to add? Chand: These are difficult times we are going through and we therefore need support and cooperation of everybody and one of the things which will helps us is the international community realizing the dynamics of the whole thing and enormity of the task and instead of putting sanctions on us comes and works with in taking the country forward. They had their say in regards to what happened on 5th December and we cannot always cry over it but we can see how we can move forward from there. We have $US 250,000 and could be spent until the end of the year and therefore we encourage the people to come up with proposals, and to discuss with their respective District Advisory Councils of Provincial Administrations. It can also be channeled with the line Ministries e.g. Agriculture, Social Welfare and Housing or agencies of Government and is fully funded however we would welcome contributions in kind from the community in the form of local support. -End- |
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