Minister of Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation Mereseini Vuniwaqa has assured Social Welfare beneficiaries that their entitlements will not be affected in the 2021/2022 National Budget.
While supporting the 2021/2022 National Budget, Vuniwaqa says the total allocation to the Ministry for the upcoming fiscal year is $145 million, which is a decrease of 9.21 percent from last year.
She says the largest portion of the ministry’s total budget allocation in the new fiscal year is for the administration of the nation’s core Social Protection Programs.
She says the clientele benefiting from these programs include children, the disadvantaged, persons with disabilities and the elderly.
Vuniwaqa says Salote Radrodro has picked on the decrease in the social protection budget for the Ministry to support her assertion that it shows a case of misplaced priority.
She says last year, the Ministry carried out for the first time a recertification exercise to clean and update their list of beneficiaries.
Vuniwaqa says for that exercise alone over 7,000 beneficiaries from different programs were removed from the beneficiary list.
She says to complement that, the Ministry’s efforts in regularly reviewing case files to ensure that only eligible beneficiaries are actually receiving allowances have had an impact as well.
Vuniwaqa says Radrodro can be rest assured that the decrease in the Ministry’s budget is going towards other government programs that have the same aim to leave no one behind during these trying times.
The Minister has also commended the Minister for Economy for announcing government paid stall fees for market vendors and free sanitary pads for female students.
Vuniwaqa says as a nation keen to achieve gender equality aligned to its international obligations and national policy commitments these two programs are especially welcome.
She says the reduced allocations to gender programs within the ministry does not mean there is a lack of political will but it is a means to place emphasis on gender-responsive budgeting across government.
Vuniwaqa says the budget reaffirms the Government’s commitment to the empowerment of women with the allocation of $150,000 for the Department of Women to implement its core programs under the Women’s Plan of Action.
She says this is a significant reduction from the last fiscal year but the reduction is based on the low utilization rate which was mainly due to the postponement of programmes because of Tropical Cyclone Yasa and Ana and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vuniwaqa also thanked every frontline worker who is at battle since the second wave of COVID in Fiji for every Fijian.
She says the death toll due to COVID-19 is increasing with the spread of the disease over the past three months and what is also known is that a good majority of those who passed away were unvaccinated.
Vuniwaqa says COVID-19 has also been a huge blow to those who were able to make ends meet before the pandemic and this budget further targets everyone who has been impacted in the best possible way for some relief, all of which fall into the larger social protection system of the country and is not restricted to social welfare beneficiaries alone.
Stay tuned for the latest news on our radio stations
