Commissioner Northern’s Office wins first prize

For the first time the Ministry of Rural and Maritime Development team representing the Office of the Commissioner Northern won the Team Excellence Award during a symposium. The six-member team led by the divisional secretary northern Soko Tuima were among the four participants at the Fiji National University organised event at Labasa Civic Centre yesterday.

“To be a first-time participant in this kind of competition and to get top award it’s a great achievement for the division and the ministry as a whole,” Mr Tuima said.

“We used quality circle tools to design a project for this competition that we learnt during a workshop in Suva three months ago. We included even our office driver and clerical officers to identify problems affecting the performance of the division.

“And that was the increase in revenue arrears in the Northern Division. Our ministry is mandated under the business licence to approve and issue licences to small businesses in rural areas. On that we have to collect arrears of business licence fees for Government.” “I would like to thank FNU and National Training and Productivity Centre for organising this third symposium and award programme,” he said.

“Now we have to prepare for the national convention and quality competition which will be held in Nadi in October this year.” FNU manager quality award Bob Mitchell said second winner was Energy Fiji Limited and they have three teams (Sky, Raptors and Ray). “The Team Excellence Award is the highest accolade given to any project teams in the team excellence initiative,” Mr Mitchell said. “The teams had an opportunity to present their completed projects on a regional platform and also benchmark against some of the best practices from teams in leading organisations.”