NEW GOVT SHOULD continue work on DECENTRALISING SERVICES STARTED BY previous Govt

One sure way of enhancing Government services to the people is to continue the work of decentralising them. The FijiFirst Government made significant progress which the new Government can build on.

Fijians in rural and maritime areas travel long distances to the urban centres to access some services. Some of those services are now available in their localities.

The new Government needs to keep adding new services so that rural and maritime residents are empowered to engage in socio-economic activities that are relevant and beneficial to them.

It also increases the Government’s capacity to contribute more to its domestic economy and mainstream economy.

In fact, statistics show that the rural and maritime areas contribute significantly to the national economy. So, it is in the national interest that we maintain the momentum of developing our rural and maritime economic activities.

It will help towards slowing down the urban drift. The slow growth in the rural and maritime areas has been attributed to people migrating to the urban areas to look for education and employment opportunities.

Keeping people in their villages, settlements and communities is a major challenge because of the attraction of what the outside world offers. To counter that, we need to offer alternatives that are equal, if not, better than that.

Young Fijians will gravitate towards places that provide tertiary education and later their dream jobs, and they are usually located in urban areas. If they can use their qualifications for their jobs in rural and maritime areas, they will move there. Labour mobility is a fact of life that we must live with. We have several thousands of Fijians working in New Zealand and Australia under the Pacific access labour scheme.

While we encourage our people to take on jobs on offer in those two countries, we need to cater for the remainder who are left behind.

The rural and maritime areas have huge potential that has not been sufficiently tapped.

We need our best brains and investors to come up with innovative ideas on how we can develop our rural and maritime areas using their natural resources and unique assets.