AGNI DEO RETAINS FTU POSITION

FIJI Teachers Union (FTU) incumbent general secretary Agni Deo Singh has retained his position in the union.

Mr Singh said he was overwhelmed with the support provided by the members.

“Our entire team has won the elections and we are indeed humbled by the overwhelming support we have received from the members,” he said.

“We were confident all the time, but the support we have received is massive in terms of the percentage votes that we have all received.”

He said they would further strengthen the empowerment programs for the grassroot members.

“We have a women’s wing and we will conduct empowerment workshops for our women members.

“We also are going to establish a youth wing in the forthcoming annual general meeting and we will get into the youth empowerment program at district level as soon as possible.

“We want to have a transition plan, a succession plan whereby our youths can gradually come into decision-making positions in the national executives.”

Mr Singh said they were looking forward to their annual general meeting scheduled to take place at the end of the month.

“While we have our long list of achievements, we also have some serious pending matters that we’ll now have to straightaway begin addressing with the ministry.

“We have an annual general meeting just around the corner and we are going to take some serious resolutions to the annual general meeting and those resolutions will then be presented to the ministry to be addressed through dialogue and negotiations.”

Mr Singh had been the FTU general secretary since 1999.