TAILEVU PROVINCE TO FORM CARE NETWORK
Bau chief Ratu George Kadavulevu said when exoffenders were released their acceptance from their own village was important.
The chairman of the Tailevu Provincial Council, Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police (ADCP) Rusiate Tudravu, has confirmed that the province would form the Tailevu CARE Network to support ex-offenders.
“Care stands for care and rehabilitation,” Mr Tudravu said yesterday while attending the one-day Fiji Corrections Service Tailevu Yellow Ribbon Project symposium at the Novotel Convention Centre in Lami.
He said the province fully supported the initiative of the symposium.
Bau chief Ratu George Kadavulevu said when ex-offenders were released their acceptance from their own village was important.
“Village chiefs and headmen should advice the villagers to accept ex-offenders when they come back to their villages especially when they had undergone programmes in the Corrections complexes they were in. This programme should be continued in all villages,” he said.
He feels that they should be given a piece of land to work on and provided the necessary help to start what they wanted to do. Verata chief Ratu Sevanaia Verata commended the symposium. He believes that it was the responsibility of all those in the village to support ex-offenders back into the village.
Corrections Commissioner Commander Francis Kean, in his opening address, said the objective of the symposium was to establish the Tailevu Community Action for the Rehabilitation of Ex-offenders (CARE Network) within the Tailevu province.
Plus, the concerted supporting efforts of all relevant stakeholders is needed to make the CARE Network a success. Commander Kean said the symposium was a tool they were using to engage and garner community, stakeholders corporate, public sectors and interested persons in the holistic rehabilitation and successful reintegration of ex-offenders back into their families and the Fijian society as a whole.
He said they were looking at forming the CARE network in all the 14 provinces in Fiji. More than 100 participants from the Tailevu province attended the symposium. There are 178 inmates from the province of Tailevu currently serving sentences. The youngest is aged 19, while the oldest is 65-years-old.