Are those at the top doing their best to help?

People are complaining among themselves about the recent hike in food prices, electriciity bills to name a few, the Fiji Electricity Authoority have issued a letter to every fea account holder a letter outlining an added dollar or dollars to their normal monthly bill that they will be billed in the last 3 months of the year 2011
In an article from the Fiji Times of Saturady 22 October, 2011 FEA Chief Executive and head of honcho Hasmukh Patel clearly indicates this.

IF you think the Nadarivatu Hydro will bring the prices of power down, you are wrong.Hasmukh Patel, the head honcho of the Fiji Electricity Authority said people must remember that the authority took out a loan of $244million to construct the dam and will need to pay it back.With the start of the "summer" season, Mr Patel has urged members of the public to consume electricity wisely.

An example is a neighbour of mine Mrs. Bano Prasad who has asked me to write a news article about what the FEA consumers are facing, she added sying that the authoriuty have increased the number of units customers to calculate the fea bills. 

"Due to this I am very careful with how I use my electrical appliances, making sure that it doesn't, increase my monthly bill," she added sadly rather.

Taking this into account and what the fea boss have advocated I guess, we have no choice but to consume electricity wisely.

Get back to the olden days style of using our God-given hands to clean the house and wash the cloathes.

As for food prices, Health Minister Dr. Neil Sharma says price upswing of food represents a major threat to food security in developing countries.

We should take into account individual households some are old and cannot manage a small garden, some are busy at work and don't have time to plant a garden as a supplement to their income.

He said this affected farmers and individual households and action must be taken to improve food security at household level.

According to the World Bank, in 2010-2011 rising food costs pushed nearly 70 million people into extreme poverty, Dr Sharma said.At the individual level, people may need to skip a meal when food prices rise.Farmers are hurt too because they need to know the price their crops are going to fetch at harvest time, which is months away.

One of the Fiji governments, reminder to the public which they advocate in billboards and catalogues is for  fiji citizens to buy local, how can the people buy local if they keep on increasing the prices of food items, I was amazed to find the price of a can of punjas condensed milk increasing to $4 plus just last week.

Not forgetting the price of sugar, the most talked about issue,the governemnt has promised that it will increase the price of sugar for a while and than it will drop after the sugar industry has been revived, we wonder when? 

Here is an article about sugar reforms: The European Commission's proposal to remove all sugar quotas as part of its Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) reform has left the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries concerned and dismayed  

"For those who have already ratified and are implementing respective EPAs, these changes are tantamount to a unilateral modification of an international treaty. For those countries still in negotiation, they will increase doubts about the benefits of EPAs since duty free quota free access is worthless without a remunerative and predictable market price which for many EPA EBA suppliers represents the only source of income. Not to mention that the proposed lowering of price will seriously hurt the prospects of these countries to achieve their Millennium Development Goals.

Much has changed since the 2005 Reform of the EU sugar regime was introduced and it is only two years since the final and largest cut in sugar prices occurred. Market conditions have been difficult and it is only thanks to market management tools (of which quotas are the core) that it has been possible to cushion the impact of world market disturbances. The removal of quotas at this time would be premature, unnecessary and almost certainly counterproductive

 The ACP and LDC sugar suppliers consider that while the drive to greater liberalisation is understandable, time is needed to secure the benefits already under way in the industries. Consequently, they consider that maintenance of quotas until at least 2020 is fully justified. They therefore join the other stakeholders to urge the Commission to reconsider its proposals," the statement said.

I guess we as a nation will have to be patient with the current fluctuating price of sugar until Fiji has to achieve it's millenium goals, as they are considering a maintenance of quotas until 2020, and when we ask who are they the people at the top of course, The European Commission are discussing theses reforms in parliment because Fiji has an interim EPA meaning Economic Partnership Agreement with the Commission. and they are the ones's making reforms with our sugar prices. 

Prices of flour and and other wheat products have also gone up, but do we see an improvement in some of these products? no the prices have increased but the product is the same, some long loaves of bread that we buy from shops are almost like eating wafers, I wonder how much flour do they use to make a loaf of bread,? Morris Hedstrom still make delicious quality bread and people line up in ques everyday to get a loaf, noodles they sell in packets of 5 are increasing almost very week, if you're a weekly shopper like me you will notice, it is a style with supermarket nowadays when they find people buying one particular item everyday because the price is reasonable they icrease the price or take it out of the shelf,hallo! where are our rights as a consumer? 

Here is an article about the Flour Mills of Fiji promising to provide the best product:Flour Mills of Fiji will continue to uphold the quality of its products in particular rice and flour.

This is amid claims that there are some importers who have brought in rice and flour of inferior quality into the country.

FMF Group Chief Executive Ram Bajekal said his company was particular about the quality of their products.

Recently, he said, a certain brand of flour had entered the market that was below the Health Ministry's fortification requirement of a minimum 30 per cent gluten content.
Mr Bajekal said the flour contained about 23 per cent gluten. FMF's testing including baking a bread out of the flour, in which the end result was a flat as a pizza bread

Meanwhile, despite Rice Company of Fiji Ltd suffering the negative impact of removal of duty on imported white (milled) rice, as a result of which it has had to change its core business model from rice milling to trading in imported white rice, the company had been successful in embracing such changed business model.
The removal of duty has resulted in RCF's market share dropping from around 50 to 60 per cent to around 30 per cent almost overnight in 2008-09.

The company has successfully turned around from a loss situation in 2008-09 to a profitable one in 2009-10 and further improved on its performance in 2010-11, with net profit almost doubling to over $985,000.
The company is working towards securing a competitive sourcing advantage to leverage and deliver on its branded and co-branded products in coming years.

Despite the rising cost of living, Fiji and the rest of the Pacific Islands is reasonably kept apart from the continuing financial market crisis centered on the European Union debt Crisis according to the Australian New Zealand pacific mothly report.

 The report said inflation remained elevated in most Pacific economies, with headline CPI for Fiji and Timor-Leste in double digits.

"Among central banks, Bank of Papua New Guinea chose to remain on hold at its meeting this month after a rate hike in July," it said.

"External indicators were mixed, but remain vulnerable. Trade data exhibited a downward bias; while remittances and tourism data showed signs of weakness, despite being broadly positive.

"Pacific currencies were broadly weaker against the USD in September, although the peggers/heavily-managed regimes (PGK, SBD) bucked the trend. In contrast, the region's currencies strengthened against AUD. These trends are reversing this month."

Australia has extended its Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme to another four Pacific Island nations. Workers from Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu will join those from PNG, Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu to work on farms in need of seasonal labour.

Except for Vanuatu, the report said inflation across the region remained elevated. Among the new data releases, Samoa's August inflation rose to 5.1 per cent (from July's 4.8 per cent) on account of higher clothing and footwear prices. Tonga's CPI also rose by 6.9 per cent (vs. 6.6 per cent previously) because of higher transportation costs. Timor's August inflation, meanwhile, was unchanged from the previous month, remaining elevated at 13.1 per cent.

Fiji's May export growth inched up to 2.5 per cent, while imports contracted further by 6.6 per cent, from April's 5 per cent drop.

To conclude my topic today, I would like to write something about dishonest pratices happening in our beautiful country today, with the rising cost of living and the financial crisis the world is facing some people are still living as a liar. Thinking back in the year 2008 I hired a carpenter to erect a one room extension with an adjoining concrete bathroom and toilet to our house in Khalsa Road Tacirua.

In the process of his construction I asked him if he knows a person who wish to sell a second-hand cistern so that we could buy and use since our cistern is not working and we had to labourously lift a bucket of water to flush down the waste, everytime we use the toilet,.

He smilingly said that he has one and that he was selling it for $35.00. The next day he brought the cistern  applied fittings and I saw that it was working so I gave him the money.

But after some-time the cistern started to play up and since he was still doing his carpentry work I asked him to fix it, he fixed it. Still it did not work according to my expectation, later on a friend told me I should have bought a new cistern instead of buyinng from him, by that time he had already left my house with the his full wages $200 not completing his work and not replacing the bad cistern.

I had his phone contact with me I texted him but to no avail, I guess he is a man of lies. as the saying goes Lies beggets liars.

Its no wonder (referring back to what he told me) a lot of construction companies he had worked for never bothered to pay him because they knew that he was full of dishonest practices, here is an article about dishonest practices happening in our country: 

In this particular situation, a concrete house was being constructed in rural Fiji where there was no piped water. The complainant had to deal with four carpenters to have the house constructed.

The first one failed to use the water pump. The second carpenter (who was obsessed in the belief that he was very intelligent) failed to have the walls perpendicular to the floor and had to be laid off.

Another carpenter on an eight-hour shift spent most of the time mixing and drinking grog and snoring in the afternoons. Little progress was made in constructing the house and he had to be relieved too.
The fourth carpenter tried to impress the complainant with quality work but had to be removed because the work was not commensurate with wages demanded

On being told by the employer that he was steeped in low cunning and craftiness, he began to threaten the employer about his intentions to report the matter to FICAC.

Another carpenter took a $1200 deposit but failed to commence the work to date. Reporting the matter to police proved futile as police referred the case to the Small Claims Tribunal.
As a citizen of Fiji lets's try to be honest,  transparent, work in unity and bear  with each other irrespective of race, colour creed, and status, begining  from those in leadership down to the grassroot citizen, we are all one in this world.