13/07/2024
RESPONSE TO HON MINISTER TABUYAS BUDGET 2024- 25 STATEMENT
Quote: ‘It is not the sole responsibility of the government to financially sustain our social welfare recipients’. It is first and foremost the responsibility of the family. Government merely supplements this responsibility in recognition of the service our older persons have given Fiji, and supplementary support for our most vulnerable’
Not being familiar with the SecurityStabilitySustainability I looked it up and from what I understand the 3S Initiative: Sustainability. Stability. Security is a UN sponsored Convention to combat Desertification which was launched in Morocco and Senegal to address the root causes of instability in Africa – in particular migration and conflict related to the degradation of natural resources – through an innovative approach.
With respect, Minister, quite apart from the fact that I find your statement condescending and unwarranted, it's frankly insulting to our law-abiding Fiji families who do avail themselves to social welfare protection as it is their right to do.
Respectfully, as the Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection you only have one job, and that is to take care of the welfare and well being of all our people, especially our Women, Children and the less fortunate and most vulnerable members of the family of Fiji.
But judging by your ill-considered statement, which I see as an attempt to ‘deflect’ from your Ministerial responsibilities, perhaps you are not up to the task of handling this ‘one job’ you have.
So allow me to enlighten you with a few facts that you may not be familiar with which might help you rethink your choice of words next time.
For starters, every family in Fiji is quite capable of taking care of themselves and have been doing so all this time, where some may struggle, their fall back position is their immediate and extended family network as well as friends who will always pitch in to help where they can, that's just how we do things.
Which is why, despite the hardships that so many face, the majority have been able to ‘sustain’ their own well being and for those who cannot, they are absolutely entitled to avail themselves to the Government’s Social Welfare Protection schemes that your Ministry is supposed to provide.
What you seem to have forgotten however is that there is a very real reason why so many of our families still struggle today and unless we add these ‘variables’ into the mix of determining our sustainability the picture that emerges as yours shows does not reflect our reality.
For example we have had 4 coups costing $9 plus billion in losses to families and the country caused by none other then the very institution of the state that is charged with securing our nation and our people’s stability and security, but are granted absolute, unconditional, irrevocable immunity from any criminal prosecution for destroying the lives of thousands of our law abiding families.
This immunity extends to any civil or other liability in any court, tribunal or commission, and their Immunity is not able to be reviewed, amended, altered, repealed or revoked.
Now as if this is not bad enough, after turning the lives of tens of thousands of our ‘law abiding citizens’ ‘upside down’ destroying their families, businesses, resulting in many of them losing their cars, homes and properties, incurring huge losses and setting everyone back 10 years at least, from which they all had to restart from scratch to rebuild their lives from the ruins caused by the 4 coups.
And what pray was the solution that the state imposed as a remedy to correct this ’instability and security breach’?
Why they tied the recovering families hands behind their backs and inserted Sec 158 (3) which states quote ’No compensation shall be payable by the state to any person in respect of damage,injury or loss to his or her property or person caused by or consequent upon any conduct from which immunity has been granted under this section’
And this Minister is why some of our families require Social Welfare Protection and your only job is to ‘deliver that support’ to our families. Our root causes here are unlike the root causes that Morocco and Senegal need to address which causes instability in Africa
I also hate to break it to you Minister, but based on a quick assessment I did on your Ministries 2024-25 Budget, and the recent 2023-24 Budget you are NOT financially sustaining our Social Welfare recipients and nor was this being done from 2019-2023.
A quick scan through Page 178 of your Ministry’s Expenditures for Field Services will allow your accounts section to work out as I have done that the per recipient funds which your ministry plans to pay out in this budget is less than the Base Poverty Line of $41.91 a week per Adult Equivalent. Which means in layman's terms your Ministry is ‘perpetuating poverty’ not preventing it.
To save you the trouble I attach a summary of the Field Services main social welfare funding effort from 2019-20 to 2023-24. Also As the last Annual Report of your Ministry is the 2020.21 so for this exercise I have used the number of recipients in your 2020-21 report as the Supplementary Notes only provided the amounts allocated and not the number of recipients. And here is what your Ministry is doing for Social Protection.
Poverty Benefit Scheme. The average % over the 6 years to today's budget for this programme shows that the amount to be paid to recipients is $6.41 a week or (84.68%) less than the base poverty line of $41.91 a week.
Care & Protection Allowance: The average weekly amount to pay out is $6.14 which is (85.8%) below the base Poverty line.
The Social Pension Scheme : The average pay out per week is $26.63 which averages (36.86%) below the base poverty line..
Disability Allowance comes The average pay out per week is $22.41 which is on average (46.7%) below the base poverty line.
Rural Pregnant Mothers Food Vouchers The average payout per week is $7.05 which averages (83.2%) below the base poverty line.
Bus Fare Subsidies The average weekly pay out is $5.74 which averages (86.3%) per cardholder per week below the poverty line.
Not one of the Social Protection Schemes for 2024-25 Budget that I have listed comes close to providing adequate Social Protection for our needy and that's before we add the the constitutional rights of our citizens that have not been respected such as
Sec 1 (a) Common and Equal Citizenry (b) respect for Human Rights, Freedom and the Rule of Law, (d) Equality for all and care for the less fortunate based on the ‘values’ in the Bill of Rights, (e) Human Dignity and respect for the Individual,
Sec 8 Right to life,
Sec 9 Right to Personal Liberty,
Sec 11 Freedom from cruel & Degrading Treatment,
Sec 26 Right to Equality and freedom from Discrimination (3) A person must not be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly on the grounds of his or her (a) Actual or supposed personal characteristics or circumstances, including race,culture, ethnic or social origin, colour, place of origin, s*x, gender, s*xual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status or pregnancy.
I'll stop here as I think I've made my point.