New Ministerial Portfolios are Lavish: Sayed-Khaiyum, Rabuka fires back
Opposition member of Parliament, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said he had no faith in the reign of the new Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka. Mr Sayed-Khaiyum made the comment when questioned whether he had faith in the leadership of Mr Rabuka.
“No, I don’t,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“You think you are in a time period like the 1980s,” he said.
“You have ministerial works, old style of having Ministry of Home Affairs, very inward looking as opposed to outward looking.
“And of course, we have the Ministry of Works and Local Government, Housing again, that’s an old structure. We can see that they all remanence the old way of thinking is back, and this is what they were saying.”
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said the ministerial portfolios by the People’s Alliance, National Federation Party and the Social Democratic Liberal Party coalition were lavish.
“All the entire 29 members, from the now three political parties that formed Government hold ministerial and assistant ministerial portfolios.
“That’s what you call, quite lavish. All of them will get vehicles, some of them will have security details, of course they’ll increase salaries.” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said this was not a good start. “I hope that Fiji’s population realise what we had been saying from the beginning that fundamentally, the people who have formed Government are people who are in it for themselves.”
Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka while responding to Mr Sayed-Khaiyum reiterated that it was relevant for the Government to bring back these ministries so that there are targeted government actions for the people.
“We have to do that, we have to bring that back, we want to have targeted Government actions,” Mr Rabuka said. “We cannot have blanket solutions, one solution fits on, that does not apply in the society.”