Government achievements

Timoci Gaunavinaka, Nausori

Front page photos of children swimming to reach school and attend classes in tents are the realities we have been facing for decades before independence in 1970. Governments led by the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the late Dr Timoci Bavadra, Sitiveni Rabuka, Mahendra Chaudhary, Laisenia Qarase and the current one of Voreqe Bainimarama faced the same challenges.

Fiji's population distribution is spread out to the rural areas because of our land ownership system, tradition and culture.

This makes it a real challenge for all governments to build roads, bridges and provide access to clean water and electricity to all our scattered population.

That was the reason the colonial government invented and established the matanitu, yasana and tikina that were never part of the original iTaukei traditional structures.

They were invented solely to simplify governance.

The villages of Navai and Nasoqo in the upper reaches of the Wainimala are now under the Naitasiri administration when they were originally under Ra.

There are dozens of similar examples. No government has achieved total development and no government ever will.

Even if a government set a 20-year plan to provide road access to all settlements around Fiji and give them clean drinking water and access to electricity, by the time they achieved what they set out to do, there are hundreds more of new scattered settlements and villages that have sprung up each with their new set of demands.

The real challenge then is not for Government, but for each of us citizens to understand and fully comprehend the various limitations we have as a developing nation and what we have achieved.

We cannot live in dream land forever. Our national income comes from tourism, sugar, textile, agricultural exports, timber, fishery and a few lesser sources.

Our tiny and rugged land mass makes it impossible for us to produce tens of millions of tons of sugar like Queensland.

We do not have a mine that gives us millions of tons of ores like Australia. So we have to live within our means.

But this does not mean that we cannot do anything. The Bainimarama government has done so much in the last four years than any previous Government has ever done.

The people whose lives they have changed value this. In the next four years another set of developments will be done and many of those swimming or crossing rivers today will be taken care of by then.

But when that time comes, there will be another new set of challenges with their own set of demands and keeps rotating.

We cannot do everything all at once overnight but you've got to be blind or senile to think that nothing has been done.