FCOSS refrains to take funds from State – Catanasiga
THE Fiji Council of Social Services (FCOSS) has refrained from accepting any Government funding to remain an independent body, says executive director Vani Catanasiga.
Speaking to The Fiji Times’ Western Bureau Chief, Anish Chand, Ms Catanasiga said funding was an essential part of functioning as a non-government organisation.
“We haven’t, we deliberately did not ask for money,” she told The Fiji Times.
“Yes, so we can maintain our independence. We work very closely with Government, particularly during times of disaster because we are on the disaster council and we find that when we do that work we, you know, a lot of our own sector perceive us negatively because we are working with Government.
“Disaster is when the nation should come together as one and we often try to support communities who have been affected and so since 2006, we have not received funding from Government.
“There have been suggestions from our members to do that, but we have tried as much as possible to raise funds elsewhere. We will work with Government, we will also need to ensure we maintain our independence.”
Ms Catanasiga said NGOs such as FCOSS were not just a local NGO, but a membership-based organisation.
“We’ve been here since 1965 and much of the issues that we face are just like any other NGOs but one of the key things that we require is core funding and core funding for us is like $300,000 a year.
“That allows us to operate and support our members to step in during disasters and we do that and a lot of the work that we do around disasters is spearheaded by our members.
“They are community volunteers that work with Commissioners and the provincial administrators so yeah, $300k for us is sort of a core funding sealing annually at least.”