your views Vote buying? I think not! Arvind Mani, Nadi Electronic waste Satish Nakched, Suva Mystery inclusion Amenatave Yaconisau, Delainavesi FIFA World Cup TV Broadcast Nilesh Lal, Suva

‘A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself’

In the 1970s, when the Alliance Party was the government of the day, a highway was being built from Nadi to Sigatoka. I was a teacher at Cuvu College and the NFP (which was the Opposition Party) and the Alliance party would come and campaign at the school.

Once, the NFP party asked the people in attendance, “how many of you have cars?'

Very few hands went up. So the candidate triumphantly said, “See what the Alliance party is doing? They are not taking care of you.

Are you going to walk your bullocks on the road?” Don't you think the road is meant for the tourists? Don't you think it is unfair to you?”

“Yes”, cried the gullible voters in unison.

A few days later, the Alliance party came to campaign. The Alliance candidate said, “NFP must have told you that we are very unfair and are catering only to the needs of the tourists by building the highway.

Will the tourists take the highway with them when they return to their countries? When your children buy cars, don't you want them to have good roads for them?”

“Yes,” cried the voters in unison. “It is a good idea to have good roads.”

Each time, the Government of the day does anything, the NFP, which seems to be languishing in perpetual opposition, has to make an inane statement that it is a vote-buying tactic.

So what is the definition of vote-buying? The distribution of a material benefit to an individual voter in exchange for support in a ballot

So what is the Fiji First doing that constitutes vote buying? All they are doing are things good for the country.

Should that not be the objective of any government?

It is time that the Opposition admits that FijiFirst has done a sterling job (Fiji has seen phenomenal growth in the past eight years I have been here) and not delude the public by making dumb statements that they made in the 1970s about the highway.

If not, it will show that it has not learnt anything.

And a party like that does deserve to be in power.

With the usage of electrical and electronic equipment on the rise, the amount of electrical and electronic waste produced each day is equally growing enormously around the globe including Fiji. Due to innovation the equipment phase out faster with the new models in circulation and the customers opt for the advancement in technology.

These include phones, computers and other accessories and the obsolete ones are dumped and finally end up in the landfill.

The equipment contains valuable elements contained in such as copper, gold and lead which have become a source of income mostly in the informal sector of developing or emerging industrialised countries.

In Fiji there is no standard disposal system for the electronic waste and by ending up in the landfill or elsewhere it can cause serious environmental problems, from toxic chemicals and heavy metals leaching into the soil or the environment. The pollution to air and water supplies caused through improper recycling techniques may also lead to catastrophic consequences.

Such connected health risks may result from direct contact with harmful materials such as lead, cadmium or from inhalation of toxic fumes, as well as from the accumulation of chemicals in the soil, water and food.

The informal process of intentional dumping of e-waste can lead to adverse human health effects and environmental pollution.

Due to security reasons and the risk of losing data some companies toss outdated electronic equipment into the incinerators and the act of burning it is known to create chemical pollutants in the atmosphere, seriously endangering the health of nearby communities and animal populations.

As technology advances the demand for the electronic goods will escalate and the obsolete rate will rapidly grow in proportions to the new gadgets that enter the market.

There are very large organisations such as banks, universities and other organisations that own many computers and the Environment Ministry needs to work out procedures for the safe disposal of the very high risk obsolete equipment. Some years ago a recycling company in Suva was picking up the old electronic and the electrical equipment without any cost and the e-waste then was shipped off shore for recycling. I believe that this type of business should be encouraged and assisted to ensure a cleaner Fiji. The mysterious inclusion of trade unionist Daniel Urai in the SODELPA provisional line-up, as revealed to us by Nemani Delaibatiki in his analysis (FS 5/6), is a reflection of unionists' effort to enhance and compensate the interest of its members amidst the high unemployment and inflation rates in the country.

They look helpless now. HBS, the host broadcaster for the FIFA World Cup, agreed to provide a "clean" output to official broadcasters around the world. This means that the feed that official broadcasters in different countries received had minimal graphics.

This was done to ensure that different official broadcasters could capitalise on the opportunity for corporate sponsorship of the on-screen scorecard or use graphics conforming to their own stations' branding conventions.

Fiji TV is the official broadcaster in Fiji and they have been forced to share this lucrative content with other free to air broadcasters to comply with the cross carriage decree. Needless to say that a lot of money has gone into purchasing TV rights and making this content available freely to all Fijians.

I'm baffled that, despite doing all these, none of the TV stations have had the resourcefulness to provide on screen scorecards on their live and delayed broadcasts. On-screen scorecards are an important part of the viewer experience. On many instances, viewers have turned on their TV and wondered which teams are playing or how much time has elapsed. The lack of an on-screen scorecard has deteriorated the viewing experience of the audience despite it being relatively easy and inexpensive to do.

If TV stations lack the hardware (which I doubt), there are a number of inexpensive software solutions online.

I look forward to a better viewing experience for the remaining matches.