We should be planting INDUSTRIAL HEMP in Fiji now.. Do you remember Hemp rope, well many more items can be made from this miracle plant and be exported.

The best, thinnest and strongest paper for Bibles used to be made from Hemp.

Learn more, much more by clicking on the following link and reading the contents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

Students of Ba Methodist High School, villagers of Nailaga and nearby areas will now have access to the internet free of charge.

This comes after Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama opened the new telecentre at Ba Methodist High School today.

Comment:
This and other access centres where the government has made the internet accessible to students will prove to be Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama’s most enduring legacy. No other Prime Minister or politician in Fiji has had the foresight to do this.

Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama by his actions has made the libraries and research of the world available to all the students.

It is to be hoped that the gaming facilites will be blocked by the centres, not only for the students, but the people using them after school hours.

Outgoing Managing Director and CEO of Air Pacific Dave Pflieger said he cannot reveal the loan repayment agreement and details on the interest rates in relation to the loan taken from European banks to pay for the purchase of the three new A330s.

When asked in a conference, Pflieger said while many are raising issues about the loans, he said it is an amazing business plan to purchase the brand new planes to invest in the country.

The catalogue price for the new planes is US$200 million each and as revealed in 2011, the Fiji National Provident Fund gave Air Pacific a loan of $200 million which was the initial funding for the purchase of the three wide body planes. 

85 percent of the loan to purchase the planes has come from offshore banks.

When asked on the repayment plan on the huge loan, Pflieger said Air Pacific which will soon be Fiji Airways is now doing well financially and he expects it to deliver profits to pay off the loans.

Air Pacific, in which the Fiji public have a 51% interest, and the Fiji Provident Fund Members have a huge investment has not produced an annual report with a full set of audited accounts for the public to view since Fast Talking High Flying Dave was appointed to run our Airline, so why would he divulge anything now.

Perhaps the Chairman of Air Pacific who is a qualified and reputable accountant, should be asked to explain. 

The question is, how bad is it really and how long can the government of the day keep the truth hidden ?

Click on the following link for the full article:

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/07/11/can-a-single-plant-solve-many-of-our-problems/

Do yourself and all the children of Fiji a favour Dr. Sharma, read the information in the following link and then rescind the dangerous and ridiculous legislation that forbids the sale of Non Fluoride toothpaste in Fiji.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/08/04/do-you-still-believe-fluoride-is-good-for-our-teeth-read-this/

The Chief Justice Anthony Gates said he believes there will be a full set of rights in Fiji in time but he says people who are calling for judges and magistrates to resign should know that the courts need to remain open to hear cases. . 

Chief Justice Gates made the comments after recent criticisms from the International Bar Association.

While speaking in a mediation workshop, he stressed that it is important to carry out the important work of the judiciary and they should not have to walk away just because of criticisms from some organizations.

We ask when will that be Anthony Gates?, after all the current Fiji Pensioners are dead and buried; is that when their case will be heard in the Fiji courts ?

By “Full set of rights” do you mean Basic Civil Rights and the right to be heard by a fully independent and totally impartial judiciary?

It is easy for you to talk the talk now, but posterity and your peers will surely judge you for what you failed to do, which will be infamous , unlike your Chandrika Prasad ruling made in a fully independent impartial court.

The path to infamy is a very slippery slope indeed, and unfortunately it appears you could be heading that way. Only time will tell…

Computerization 20 years forward, information 30 years backward

Islands Business, 15 March 2013.

By Professor Wadan Narsey
The public readily engage in a heated debate on politics, while ignoring changes silently taking place in something as mundane as the “public availability of information”. Yet the latter can be far more important for our people’s welfare than exciting politics.
In every Pacific country, computerization (both hardware and software) has charged ahead over the last two decades. Computer prices have plummeted; processing power and storage capacity has increased a billion times; a small lap-top is the equivalent of a roomful of computers forty years ago; there are amazing software applications; and the Internet and mobile revolutions give access to the world’s libraries and information.
Word-processing allows reports to be written, corrected, formatted, spell-checked and printed.
Spread-sheets, with more than a million rows and 16 thousand columns of data, make complex mathematical, financial, logical and graphical functions, so easy, menu driven, requiring just a few clicks.
Database software allows for the easy menu-driven processing of massive amounts of data, once the domain only of bureaus of statistics and armies of statisticians who had to write complex programs.
All this “firepower” is available for the price of a good TV set or a gold necklace or a holiday abroad.
 
So why is it that for most government departments,

(a) the real information provided has gone backward s– in some cases by more than 30 years?

(c) already printed public information, is not provided through websites in a ready-to-use form?

The Fiji examples I give here (some bad and some good) are relevant for other PICs as well, as also may be an initiative I suggest.
 
Ministry of Labour

A few years ago, as part of my ECREA study on Just Wages for Fiji, I read through 40 years of Annual Reports by the Ministry of Labour. I was dismayed by one unexpected aspect – the massive deterioration over the four decades of real information provided.
  In the (colonial) sixties and post-independence seventies, the Ministry of Labour (and most Government ministries) did not have access to their own computers for analyzing data, tabulating or report writing.
  Data was analyzed using calculators, while Annual Reports were typed on manual typewriters, by “typists” (remember that extinct species?).
  Yet those early Annual Reports were full of useful comprehensive data and analysis.  
  Not any more. Have a look at recent Ministry of Labour Reports (they are all available in the Fiji National University Library).
  The actual production of most government Annual Reports are now outsourced to private companies, who take whatever data and text they are given by the Ministry, and turn out beautiful glossy reports.
  They are full of strategic plans, visions, missions, philosophies, etc., but devoid of any real information, which the public really need  to understand what is happening in that area, or to assess the ministry’s work by their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
  Like all government departments, Labour also has a glossy website, full of corporate plans, press releases, speeches and photos of Ministers, and wonderful enunciations of “spiritual values”.
But this website contains little useful information pertaining to the terms and conditions of work actually done by Fiji’s employees which is what the Ministry of Labor should be concerned about.
The last Annual Labour Report on their website is for 2007 (five years ago), and even that, astonishingly, gives you just the front cover!
  Yet the Ministry of Labour (and all its branches throughout Fiji) is full of computers, software and data, all available for analysis.
  It has dozens of staff with degrees, diplomas and certificates, which should enable them to analyze the data and present solid analytical useful reports for the stakeholders. Yet they don’t.  Their regional data is not even collated centrally despite their usefulness.
Does this Ministry of Labour think that taxpayers who pay their salaries, are not entitled to such relevant information? This is certainly not what I would expect from the current Minister, a former CEO of TPAF and a good USP graduate.
  Researchers could do a PhD analyzing the “empty” KPIs in the Ministry of Labour’s Corporate Plans.
  They are a typical example of “managerial revolutions” that nearly all Fiji’s government departments have been taken through in the last two decades (often by donors), converting genuinely productive technical people into paper shuffling and meeting-attending “managers”, of this and that.
 
Many other such departments

Have a look at the Department of Police, which also does not put on its website any real time series information on crimes, suicides etc., although press releases often selectively quote some statistic or two.
  The data is all there of course, within the Department, but sitting on someone’s desk or computer.
  Even when requested (as I recently did for information on suicides and attempted suicides in 2010 and 2011), why do those in power refuse to give the data to the public, let alone make it freely available to anyone who wants it, on their website? The frequent response is: Sir, what do you want it for? I will have to ask my superiors.  I will call you back. (They never do.)
Are decisions being consciously made by those in power, to deny the public the relevant data, in case it throws their performance in a bad light?
  Or are they simply unaware that giving the public all relevant data (that does not divulge individual information) is a necessary condition for their government to claim to be open, transparent and accountable to the tax-payers?
There could be several PhD theses, examining the websites of all government departments, for their usefulness, transparency and accountability, given the information that they all have or should have, that the public should be made aware of.
 
The Fiji National Provident Fund

The Fiji National Provident Fund is another sad example of a public organization which has gone backwards as a provider of data and useful information. This regression has even more serious implications for public welfare, given the centrality of FNPF to Fiji people’s lives and economy.
  Once upon a time, the FNPF Annual Reports and website used to have numerous useful data series on the operations of the FNPF – its membership profile, contributions, investments, earnings, etc.
  It is dismaying that most of this information has now been removed from the FNPF website and most are not even available in their Annual Reports.
  Why has the FNPF removed all this information from their website, in a period when massive restructuring of pensions and fund investment is taking place, with major implications for the welfare of FNPF contributors and pensioners?
  Was it a decision by the Board or the management? Or both, given how their functions have been astonishingly merged in recent years? (another PhD).
  This trend of deliberate reduction of information for the public, suggests that the FNPF is being very frugal with the truth when it claims to be transparent and accountable to their members. Continue reading →