11 Aug 2006

Fiji's Chaudhry attacks FLP minister

3:19 pm on 11 August 2006

The Fiji Labour Party leader, Mahendra Chaudhry, has attacked one of his party's ministers in the multi-party government for being evasive.

Radio Legend reports that it happened when Mr Chaudhry asked the minister for agriculture, Gyani Nand, about the progress made in implementing the alternative livelihood project for displaced farmers to which millions of dollars had been committed.

In a lengthy reply, Mr Nand said the conceptualisation, organisation and management structure of the alternative livelihood programme is an ingenious piece of work that would involve the mobilisation of a lot of people, time and resources to implement.

Mr Nand added that the project was launched only in October last year and needs time before results can be seen.

He said the honorable Mr Chaudhry should read the agriculture ministry's corporate plan and get a fair picture of the alternative livelihood programme.

But Mr Chaudhry said the minister was not answering the question.

Mr Chaudhry said if Mr Nand had only confined himself to answering the question he would have taken only a quarter of the time that he took.

Mr Chaudhry said the short and simple answer to that would have been that nothing has been done in the last three years and how much will be done in the next three years of the six-year project is very doubtful.

He said as only 260,000 US dollars of the 4.65 million budgeted for this year has been released, he did not think this project would achieve its intended purpose in its six-year life span,

Mr Chaudhry said MP's rights to ask questions should not be compromised because some ministers decide to give very long answers when they are not necessary.