your views

‘A GOOD NEWSPAPER IS A NATION TALKING TO ITSELF’

We, Fijians, are thankful for the new Chinese Ambassador’s offer to work with Fiji to entice 300,000 Chinese tourists.

This market is important because a significant proportion of these tourists will arrive during Fiji’s low season, although this low have improved with pent up demand due to COVID-19.

If my maths is correct, this equates to approximately 802 full A350 flights over a year, or over 66 flights a month.

As I have stated in my earlier letter, Fiji will need direct bilateral turnaround landing rights to Chinese mainland cities.

With the current Ambassador’s supportive attitude, we can be sure that Fiji will have his support.

With 300,000 tourists spending an average $500 per night and staying an average of eight nights, Chinese tourists would spend approximately $1.2 billion. Add to this, airfare conservatively at $1000 each, Fiji Airways would net $300 million.

This will go a long way to substantially grow our economy so that Fiji can reduce its high debts, fund infrastructure maintenance/development and social needs.

Fiji will need to quickly ramp up our room stock. Owners, banks and Government will need to work through roadblocks and get more rooms online, including the closed Accor Pullman, WG Friendship Plaza and new hotels.

Once again, a very big thank you to China. May God continue to bless and grant China and Fiji peace and prosperity.

I refer to the news about our water crisis. This was deliberated at Suva’s Holiday Inn yesterday at WAF’s Water Sector Strategy 2050 ideation workshop.

The chief executive officer of Water Authority of Fiji, Dr Amit Channan, described his first year at WAF as the firefighting experiences. The WAF customers want WAF to move away from firefighting to “Fire Prevention”, and there is no doubt about it.

Everyone wants better water management systems in place, and the CEO’s comments are correct. The people of Fiji want access to clean water and sanitation for better life. The question arises here is that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Biman Prasad, says that a sizeable chunk of the national budget have been allocated to WAF during previous government administration period. This is totalling to $1.12 billion.

If the national budget was not genuinely, truly and fruitfully utilised by WAF, it would result in firefighting experiences as labelled by the WAF’s chief executive.

Let’s move forward from “Firefighting” to “Fire Prevention” strategy under the leadership of the peoples’ coalition Government.

Air and water the essential source of life;

For which every living things strife;

Comes in form of solid, liquid, vapour;

Its value in monetary terms one cannot measure;

Its availability one must treasure;

It’s a combo we need for daily living;

The duo make nature flourish;

With glee the environment nourish;

One should see in return what we giving; Keeping the sources pristine;

As humans should be our aim keen;

Not just celebrate for a day;

But observe the importance all the way;

The biggest problem in Fiji is that we use the same good water for drinking, cooking and flushing the toilets. Why not use sea or river water for flushing toilets?

Each time a toilet is flushed you can use up to 20 litres of good clean water.