Cabinet to be Reduced

Interim Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama has today announced that he will reduce the current cabinet size from 17 to 13 interim ministers from the 1st of next month.

While making the announcement, Bainimarama said ten months have now lapsed since the president appointed the interim government and it is now timely to critically evaluate the performance of the interim government in relation to the mandate of the president.

Bainimarama said they have made progress on a number of fronts during these challenging times and to name a few; they have done well to arrest the decline in the state of the nation's fiscal situation and they have made steady progress in restoring law and order. He also said that the creation of FICAC and introducing the necessary laws will result in those involved in corrupt practices to be taken to task.

The Interim PM also said that they are now in the process of dismantling discriminatory and race based policies. He further states that they are in the process of identifying areas of neglect in the NLTB and the indigenous Fijian administration to ensure that better policies and procedures are put in place so that the ordinary indigenous Fijians can benefit from the changes.

However, Bainimarama said despite all these achievements, he is not satisfied with the overall level of accomplishments so far.

In particular, the Interim PM believes that the interim administration should have been moving faster, and with greater consistency and sense of urgency, to achieve more concrete results in the delivery of services to the people of Fiji.

He said based on this, one of his measures is to reshuffle the cabinet and he will take this opportunity in the forthcoming budget.

Bainimarama said the overall goal of this reshuffle is to remove overlaps and conflicts, balance the workloads and responsibilities, and enhance synergies. The reduced cabinet team will come together from December 1st.