AG announces plans for government road safety campaign

Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has announced plans for a comprehensive government road safety campaign as the next important phase of civil service reforms to ensure that government vehicle drivers are not driving dangerously.

He says this campaign will seek to address the underlying attitude of senior government officers who direct their drivers to speed or behave unsafely on the roads.

He also says that in their national budget submissions this year, the ministries will be required to present cost operational plans to fully justify their budget request.

While giving his ministerial statement on the Fijian Government’s Civil Service reforms, Sayed-Khaiyum says that they also want the ministries to submit their budget for the next two to three years so that they can plan better.

While responding to the ministerial statement, SODELPA MP Salote Radrodro says the Civil Service Reform initiative was part of the former SDL government initiative and it was progressing well until the coup happened in 2006.

She says what Sayed-Khaiyum had said in his statement sounded like a plan but they would like to see the implementation.

Radrodro added that there is a big gap in what Sayed-Khaiyum had said and what is the reality on the ground.

NFP Leader, Professor Biman Prasad in his response said that he had always looked at reforms that come from governments and organizations and sometimes it is very clear that the reforms are intended to hide the inefficiency of what is going on.

Prasad says partly the civil service reforms by this government falls in that category.