Concerns about why each page of an Environmental Impact Assessment Report costs $4.84 was addressed last night by the Permanent Secretary for Environment Joshua Wycliffe in a two hour seminar held by the Fiji Law Society on the Environment Management Act.
Speaking to more than 50 people - most of them lawyers, Wycliffe says the law allows anyone to walk into their office to view or sight an Environmental Impact Assessment Report.
He says it is only when people want to take a copy of the report that they have to pay $4.84 per page.
In his reasons for why they charge $4.84 per page for an Environmental Impact Assessment Report, Wycliffe said there are consultants who put in the sweat and work for the report to be approved and one consultant could try and plagiarize.
He then went on to say that in this day and age, the government realises that there are strong intellectual property laws and they will relook at it from a bureaucratic point of view.
An Environmental Impact Assessment report on the Wailoa Hydropower Scheme Second Tunnel which has been authorised for public disclosure had 211 pages.
If this report was to be charged $4.84 per page it would cost $1,021.24 cents.
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