SPEECH AT THE 4TH NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CHARTER ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING BY ITS CHAIRMAN, MR JOSEFA SERULAGILAGI ON 10TH JUNE, 2010

Ni sa Bula Vinaka, Namaste and Good Morning to you all. It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this 4th Meeting of NPCAC. I was expecting this meeting to take place within May to keep the momentum going. It now being convened within first half of June, is still not too bad.

Whilst we have made good progress in our last 3 meetings, it is still a concern that we are spreading our resources and deliberations too wide and thin. I would like to re-iterate the comments I made in my opening remarks in the last Meeting that we need to carefully define and refocus our deliberations and work activities. The name itself, the National People’s Charter Advisory Council, gives us a fair idea as to what we should be doing. In this regards, it is best we confine ourselves to monitoring the work of Government as defined in the 11 Pillars of the Charter.

Please allow me for purposes of clarity and simplicity to read out the 11 Pillars:

1. Ensuring Sustainable Democracy and Good and Just Governance.
2. Developing a Common National Identity and Building Social Cohesion
3. Ensuring Effective, Enlightened and Accountable Leadership
4. Enhancing Public Sector Efficiency, Performance Effectiveness and Service Delivery
5. Achieving Higher Economic Growth While Ensuring Sustainability
6. Making More Land Available for Productive and Social Purposes
7. Developing an Integrated Development Structure at the Divisional Level
8. Reducing Poverty to a Negligible Level by 2015
9. Making Fiji a Knowledge-based Society
10. Improving Health Service Delivery
11. Enhancing Global Integration and International Relations.

I have had very fruitful discussions with the Secretariat last week, emphasizing the need to confine ourselves in monitoring the progress made by Government and other related stakeholders in implementation of the respective Pillars of the Charter. We also need to continuously be strategizing our thoughts and ideas on how best we can engage with and prevail upon Government to put back on track implementation of those aspects of the Charter Pillars, which for some reason or the other could have fallen through the cracks or for that matter neglected.

One of the strategies I wish to propose for your adoption is this regards is that we invite at our scheduled Meetings, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry who would be taking a lead role in the implementation of each respective Pillar to come and make a presentation to us on the progress made and the areas of concern respectively. I am pleased to note in this regards, the Permanent Secretary for the Public Service will be making such a presentation to the Council in this regards.

These presentations, however, will not, preclude the composite Report we expect to receive at each Meeting from the Secretariat, with an update on the actions taken on matters arising of previous Meeting, new steps being taken by Government on implementation of the respective Pillars of the Charter and issues for further consideration of the Council.

In our Meeting today, I would like to hear your further views on the modalities and the way forward I am proposing for our future Meetings.

Fellow members, I do not wish to take much more of your time. We have a lot to discuss in our half day meeting and as such I would like us to go straight into the Agenda and begin our meeting.